6661/Sentinels: Is it dead

Sentinels: Is it dead
Date of Scene:	25 February 2019
Location:	Warehouse offsite location
Synopsis:	Forge, Kitty and Jubilee deactivate transmissions from a Sentinel head, and begin analyzing data from it
Cast of Characters:	Forge, Shadowcat, Jubilee
Tinyplot:	Sentinels

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Forge has posed:
    In a muted, shipping warehouse near the ocean, Forge quickly called in a favor. The X-men have a building to use temporarily to examine an object that very well may be unsafe to bring home.

    Forge has a large truck parked in front, the red stripe along the top given as part of the description: bring the Sentinel Head to the building just beyond the truck. Inside, Forge has flung together an isolation chamber in a sudden manner specific to the mutant: it works 'somehow'.

    He's actively pulling some heavy gear out of the truck at the moment. Forge looks exactly like a dock worker from a distance, dressed in casual work clothes, his heavily muscled build rarely suggesting he's more a mechanic than physical labor.

Shadowcat has posed:
The Blackbird drops off Kitty and Jubilee on the way back from Gotham, and transport arranged to get them to the factory. The vehicle pulls inside the warehouse where their departure can go unobserved.

Since Kitty took possession of the Sentinel head from Magneto, she has taken the thing out of phase with her, hoping that will help keep it from transmitting any signals, should anything inside be active.

"Grab the computer gear they picked up for me, would you Jubes?" Kitty asks. There are laptops and various loose bits of computer equipment, wiring, and tools that someone might use to assemble or disassemble computer components.

Kitty, looking transparent, gives Forge a wave. "Ready for us?" she asks, oofing as she hefts the big head and begins muscling it towards the isolation chamber. She'll be careful not to go through any non-phased electronics along the way.

Jubilee has posed:
Snagging up the computer and said components in a box, Jubilee follows after Kitty with her usual bubbly and upbeat energy. "Hey, Forge! What's good my man?" She calls over happily as she gives a wiggle of fingers in his direction from beneath the box she is holding. "Long time no see. Who's excited to disect a mutant killing robot? Not me."

Once she puts the box down, she leans over to give him a shoulder bump, then gives a glance over towards Kitty. "I'll be honest, I was pretty freaked out. Never thought we'd get to /this/ point in our life where someone is literally building robots to attack us. You don't think /our/ government will sign off on something like this do you? What's next? Rounding us up and microchipping us?" She says with a wrinkle of her nose.

"I'll just hand you big brains some stuff if you need it. You know.. Jubes! Phillips! And I'll hand over a screw driver."

Forge has posed:
        "Yes; glad you didn't have trouble finding me, Kitty. Okay, that /is/ a mark one, but better to look inside," Forge identifies on sight. He jumps off the loading ramp of his vehicle after fishing around in one of the large tech trunks. "Excited? I'll take 'ready' as a better description. Hello, Jubilee," Forge smiles to the perky mutant.

    "I've thrown together something," he says simply, drawing out a device with six long wired leads. He follows inside, gesturing to take it towards the isolation box he'd prepared. He drops his goggles off his forehead. "Careful that left wall; set him with his face up, please," Forge says gently to Kitty. Once positioned in the spot, he'll nod to Kitty, and then move in behind it once it's unphased to quickly start to magnetically attach the leads in a spider-web on the neck. Forge moves confidently and adeptly: but this is what he does. He has a somewhat suppressed eagerness.

    "These were made to protect humans. I do think the government wants them, without seeing the larger problems. But then, this government has never protected minorities, or populations it prefers to suppress," says the Native American while he works, his tone even and reserved. "Please put the additional computers to the left there, on that table. There's more supplies to bring in, if you're as good at fetching supplies as you claim, Jubilee." Forge smiles sideways towards her, and then bends back over the sentinel head.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty Pryde gets the Sentinel head place in the correct location, then phases back to normal with it. She lets go and steps away. Not realizing as she wipes her hands, like there was some contagion on them that needs to be rubbed off. "Glad you were available," Kitty tells Forge as he is connecting the leads. "I know I couldn't do as thorough of a job of isolating it as you will," she says.

Kitty looks over to Jubilee, smiling as she brings the computer gear. "Perfect. I got some brand new stuff I'll soup up. Keep anything we find air-gapped," she says as she goes over and immediately starts taking one of the laptops apart. "I'm hoping Magneto didn't fry its memory too badly. There might be all sorts of things we can learn from its programming if we can access it. How it's programmed to fight, maybe find some weaknesses in its tactics, who knows," Kitty says.

Jubilee has posed:
Heading back and forth as she delivers equipment, Jubilee continues to eyeball the robot head, nose wrinkling. "Hey, if this thing comes back online for some reason and starts attacking with eye laser beams, just as a head's up, I'm gonna blow it up, or at least annoy it."

Placing the next box down, she wipes her hands off on the front of her jeans and then heads back to the Blackbird again. "What country these things came from again?" She calls over her shoulder.

Forge has posed:
    "Wolverine conducted a mission into one of the factorites that is being set up here in New York," Forge says quietly. "And brought some data from that. I have a very good start, but this is my first giant robot Sentinel head. Where from? The short answer to the question is these seem to mostly be coming from Russia right now, but other countries are supplying other areas of the world." Forge finishes connecting the leads, and then hooks those up to what Kitty can easily tell is no doubt a box to isolate and filter signals, and then finally to a computer. "If you'd like to help, see what it's trying to broadcast? It looks like it was making the attempt," he offers to her, gesturing to the computer. Forge himself begins to physically dismantle part of the back of the sentinel's head.

    "We may have company now that the signal is cut; I'll work quickly."

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty Pryde is not in the same ballpark as Forge when it comes to the breadth of devices he is knowledgeable in and able to construct. But as she settles in at the computer to begin analyzing the signals, it is like a fish being put back in the water, or a bird taking wing. Her fingers fly across the keyboard, quickly setting up a local DataBrick to capture the data stream and store it, and then beginning to analyze it.

Soon she has charts popping up mapping the frequencies. Sniffers are analyzing the packets looking for any identifiable signatures or anything human-language translatable. "Did Logan's information have anything on their processors or programming? Or just mechanical schematics?" she asks as she types away, quickly writing something to tag relevant bits of data that need further analysis.

Jubilee has posed:
"Well, I'll stand by then and warm up the hands in case we get company." Jubilee says as she pulls her pink mirrored shades down over her face, then gives off a few sparks of poppity-pop pafs about her fingers. "Freaking Russian, man. How come it always comes outta Russia when you hear about this stuff?" She puts the last box of stuff down, then steps back to let them work, staying quiet and just listening.

Forge has posed:
    "It was factory oriented, and more of a broad view. How to assemble them, where the parts come from and how the optimize making them efficiently," Forge says dryly. He's got the back of the skull open. "It was not on programming: not beyond how to install it and some troubleshooting. Still, I had full schematics of the heads. This one is older than the ones they have started to build. But I can see how it works." Forge is the master disassembler.

    The head starts to come to life, making a chilling buzzing noise, and Forge immediately reaches inside, up to the forearm, frowning. If it were a turkey, he'd be stuffing it.

    "MUTANT SIGNATURES SENSED," announces the head loudly. Forge lifts his other hand towards Jubilee in a 'hold' motion; her blowing it up would probably take his hand off at the moment.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty Pryde looks up towards the head, keeping a wary eye on it as it comes online. "It's broadcasting a homing beacon. And information as well. Not sure what yet. Could be diagnostics, mission reports... I'm totally speculating," Kitty says.

She does some more typing. "Looks like they are piggybacking it along the net, not like they have their own receivers active in the area then." More furious typing ensues.

Kitty slides her stool over in front of a separate computer that is NOT connected to the Sentinel. "Trying to trace the location it is sending the data to," Kitty says. Type type type. "Oh, you think that firewall will keep me out?" she says to the computer, shaking her head and hacking into a router to see where the packets are being sent. "Oof. It's sending the data somewhere local. Local-ish. I wonder if the FoH guys even know it was calling home. Given how they couldn't really control them, they might know it was even doing this."

Jubilee has posed:
The Robot's words cause Jubilee to visibly flinch, holding her hands upwards in front of her, chewing on her lip worriedly. She doesn't blast off, but she holds her position and guard, just in case. She takes in a deep breath, then nods as she listens to the pair of them speak. "Is it telling it's .. uh .. masters where it's at? Do you think it can still see us? Record us?"

Forge has posed:
    "This should have blocked it fully," Forge assures Jubilee. "I'm disconnecting some things in here physically, such as the sensors. If it can't get new data, it won't matter if it can broadcast, and we can move it to the better labs. And then it won't explode when I try to go after the power."

    "MUTANT SIGNATURES SENSED," the robot eerily begins to repeat. 'MUTANT SIGNATURES SENSE---"
    Forge withdraws a few pieces from inside the head, setting them nearby. "Safe to move," Forge determines quietly, looking at the deactivated head.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty is in a zone, only distracted by glances towards the head now and then. But even those come fewer and farther between as she unravels the communications. "It wasn't transmitting while I had it phased, so we might be mostly safe here for a bit, but we definitely will want to relocate," Kitty says.

She leans back on the stool with a victorious look. Realizing it is a stool and not a chair as she nearly tips it over backwards, Kitty flails for a second before righting herself. The universe's way of making sure she doesn't get a big head, apparently.

"It seems like Station 101.7 is the home of the city's hottest Hip Hop, Rap, and now also Sentinel diagnostic and mission reports," Kitty says. "Though they probably get forwarded on. And not just receiving from this one, either. There's... it might be hundreds of different things reporting in."

Kitty types a bit more. "Yes, hundreds. Though they may not all be Sentinels. I've got a sniffer recording them all. Going to take me awhile to track them back to sources and get them mapped. And also dig into the signals to see what they contain. They might not all be Sentinels," Kitty says.

She looks atscrolling list of IPs. Hundreds. "I HOPE they are not all Sentinels," she says.

Jubilee has posed:
Calming visibly, Jubilee drops her hands down at her sides and goes back to looking perky again. "Hey, I love that station. They play all the best jams." Shoving her hands into the pockets of her yellow trenchcoat, she walks around in circles as she lets the big brains continue to do their work. "While you guys speak Greek to each other, I'm gonna let Marie know that we're okay." She says as she taps along her phone with her thumbs.

Forge has posed:
    "This may be the first time I hoped for Hip hop enthusiasts," Forge comments, deadpan, to Kitty. "Hundreds?" He stands, leaving the head where it is, and crosses to look over her shoulder at the computer. He gestures at the screen, "Check those? Let's start with the odd signals, not the large bulk of similar ones. If this ends up being shut down, we want the odd cases," Forge says quietly. He may not be more than a handful of years her senior, but Forge tends to 'feel' a little older, with his stable and thoughtful manner. "I see what you've started, well done," Forge says, impressed, and gently attempts to pat Kitty's shoulder once.

    He puts the goggles back up on his forehead, dark eyes examining the data over her shoulder. If she leans back again she'd run into Forge instead of falling on the floor: he's doing a dual function, subtly. "I think I have something you can compare for signals from the factory data; they had a test suite for new units to be sure they could report."

    Forge nods once to Jubilee's statement. "Who all was there? I haven't seen a mission report."

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty Pryde has one algorithm set up that is starting to track down each signal one by one to its source. As the location of each is uncovered, a dot pops up on a map she has over to one side of the screen. "Signals from the factory would be perfect. Especially if they are a newer model, I'd like to be able to contrast," Kitty says.

She's writing some Python at the moment, setting up a neural network to study the packets from each different source and look for similarities to try to identify groups of similar natures. One of the dots on the map turns red. "Here's one with a signal close to the Sentinel head," she says.

Kitty sets up an input stream and moves to the side to let Forge type and make the connection to where he has the signal from the factory. She doesn't have a problem handing over the keyboard, whatever is fastest. "Soon as the neural network doesn't need babysitting of its parameters, we can start digging into the guts of the signal and see what all we can make from it. I assume it's probably a real time mission report. If so, it would be great if we could see what it was able to sense about each member of the team."

Jubilee has posed:
"It was Cyclops, myself and Rogue, Lorna and Kitty here. Rogue was in the air, Kitty, Slim and I was on the ground." Jubilee says as she tucks the phone away into her pocket. "Rogue mentioned seeing a government drone in the air by the way, during the attacks. Slim said to ignore it, but it makes me wonder." A bubble pops between her lips with a crack. "If it was up there to monitor and watch what was happening. Maybe even controlling it."

Rocking on her boots, she says, "So, during introduction of the robots by the bigots, they came online and started attacking the mutants that were gathered to protest. We took the robots down, saved a couple of lives, but people did get hurt. It wasn't pretty." She admits with a shift of her jaw.

Forge has posed:
    "I'm going to take this back to the proper lab and take it apart," Forge says, finishing with the keyboard and sliding it back to her. He's glad to leave her to that task. "I'll have a more full scope of what it can and cannot sense, and where they're headed with the design. There's a lot of clues left behind by looking at how something is put together: what they spent money and time on, what they didn't bother with." Forge crosses to the head, and begins to very clearly dismantle the test equipment, to reload back into the truck.

    "No-- I cannot imagine that it was," Forge says quietly, his voice troubled, to Jubilee. He works silently; if Jubilee comes to help he'll hand her things to put into a cart to take to the truck.

Shadowcat has posed:
"Jubilee severed a tentacle thing it used to pick someone up. The protest leader who activated the Sentinels clearly didn't have control of them," Kitty comments as she slides back to the keyboard. If Forge looks he'll see she's moving things off onto a server to run while they are in transit.

"Lorna got hit by an electrical blast. Heated up her armor. She's heading for the med bay to get the burns looked at. I'm going to stop down there," Kitty says. She closes up the laptops finally.

"Her father showed up which was of course a huge help in the fight. And why we have the head to examine," Kitty says. "There was a lot of gunfire too. People shooting at the Sentinels. Something really big. Maybe a high caliber rifle. And that woman that was hopping on one of them shooting inside of it," she says.

Jubilee has posed:
"Yeah, it was pretty chaotic. I hope Lorna is okay. Kinda why I tagged along with you guys so I wouldn't.. uh.. think about it. She looked real hurt." Jubilee says as she takes whatever Forge hands and puts it away. After a few minutes, her phone starts to ring: Sir Mix-A-Lot. Baby Got Back. "Oh, hey, let me get this. It's the school, probably Scott wanting to know how we're doing. I'll see you on the boat." She says as she heads for the Blackbird, answering the phone with a weathered "Hey."