AN: This story was inspired by Confession #1224 on the Marvel-Confessions blog on Tumblr. Which was about not being able to suspend one's disbelief long to believe in Sentinels. Specifically the giant ones, hehehe.

And for those of you waiting for my next story... I'm still working on it. I'm on chapter 48 right now, and I don't think I'm halfway through yet. But I just refuse to start posting anything unless I'm absolutely sure I'm not going to get stuck and be unable to finish it. (After 48 chapters I had better not!)

Enjoy:

The Sentinel Aftermath

The house shook, sending a paralysing fit of apprehension though the household. It shook again and again, the furniture and ornaments rattling nervously. It continued to shake at regular intervals, each one getting more and more violent, and then began to reduce in intensity as the source moved further away. Outside a number of car alarms went off and the screeching of tyres on the road could be heard.

The child tentatively moved to the bedroom window and peered out just in time to see the rockets under the feet of the huge purple Sentinel light up and blast it back into the sky. And with its departure, the street's residents began to come out of their houses to inspect the damage.

Mr Gardener raced out the front to see that his fence had broken down and the garden bed next to it was now sporting a mass of yellow flowers crushed in the shape of a giant foot print.

"Nooooo!" he cried out in abject horror. "That Sentinel trod on my prize-winning gazanias!"

Having been programmed to avoid cars, but apparently not fences, the Sentinel had stepped in his front yard. Furthed down the street there were a couple of footprints made of soil and crushed plants

"Oh come on!" Mrs Black exclaimed two doors down, waving her hands at the cables dangling from the utility pole. "How many more times do we have to put up with these wretched things knocking out the power?"

She glared in disgust at the severed, sparking cables, the multiple utility poles down the street that had shifted positions. One nearby utility pole had fallen over completely in addition to sporting broken cables.

"And this is why Harold and I got the generator," replied her neighbour Mrs Brown. "We can't be driving down to the hospital all the time just so we can power his dialysis machine. That's assuming we can even get there."

She looked significantly over at their neighbour, Mr Royce, who lived across the road near the intersection where the Sentinel had blasted off. The intersection itself was scorched black, and the middle of it looked more like a puddle of goo than a road. Mr Royce was cursing loudly at the melted tyres on his car.

"Third time this week!" he screeched. "The third time!"

"Mama," said a small child who lived across the road from Mr Royce. "I can't find Sooty anywhere!"

"Umm," his mother replied, averting her eyes from the charcoaled mess on the street side of the fence. "I think the Sentinel scared him, baby."

Mr Shelter, who lived opposite from Mrs Black and Mrs Brown, ran his fingers through what was left of his hair as he looked at the damage to his front yard and the dangerously sloped utility pole out the front.

"And there's the insurance premiums going up again," he said, sounding much like he was fighting off the need to cry.

"Those things are a public menace!" Dr Chancellor fumed loudly as she surveyed the widened pot holes, the damaged cars (all the alarms had finally been turned off), the broken fences, and the broken fire hydrant that was now spewing water into the air. "I'm writing to my local member. Again!"

"You write," drawled her neighbour, Mr Green. "Me, I think it's time for another protest. Which reminds me, I need to make new signs; my current ones are wearing out."

"Well," said Ms Apple, who lived on the other side of Dr Chancellor. "At least this time it didn't Blue Screen of Death in the middle of the street."