JUSTON & SENTINEL: Page 2 of 2

Publication Date: 16th Aug 2021
Written By: WorldWideWade.
Image Work: WorldWideWade.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - Page 2

Apparently, Juston’s good deeds were seen by the Avengers, because he was soon invited to join the Avengers Academy. The Sentinel’s new programming was put to the test when the X-Men were called in to help solve a mystery of who had attacked their teacher Jocasta. When the mutant team noticed a giant Sentinel was on site, they expressed trepidation. While the murder machine first declared “Destroy all mutants!” Juston quickly smacked it and it instead welcomed their honored guests. [Avengers Academy #21-22]

Soon after this, the Academy was joined by a new student named Jimmy, whom the Sentinel read as both a mutant and an alien. Juston brought this to the attention of Reptil, who had formed a close bond with Jimmy, and he explained that Jimmy was a Dire Wraith/Human hybrid. Unfortunately, Reptil was working with the evil alien and tricked Juston into being brainwashed by the creature to forget what he knew until their plans could reach fruition. This mind control eventually faltered and Juston used the Sentinel’s lack of a mind to safely attack the monster. The Dire Wraith shrugged off the attack and dismantled the Sentinel with its powers, with Juston being rescued by his classmates just in time. As the fight progressed, Juston helped his teacher Giant-Man fix up his busted Sentinel’s arm in order to repulsor blast the creature through a makeshift portal to Limbo. [Avengers Academy #24-25]

Just after this fight came a disagreement among the Academy staff. Jocasta no longer wanted to associate with the Avengers and wanted to delete all work she was responsible for at the Academy. Giant-Man asked if she would be alright with being scanned by a neutral third party to verify she wasn’t being controlled and Jocasta agreed to let the Sentinel run the diagnostic. This, of course, meant that the dismantled machine needed to be reassembled, which was done in short order. After, the Sentinel performed the task and found no outside influence in Jocasta, Hank Pym reluctantly allowed Jocasta to remove everything she helped create from the Avengers Academy. The Sentinel continued to be a good guardian of the Academy after this, such as when it caught the hero team the Runaways attempting to break into the grounds. Although a fight broke out, it was quickly halted by Giant-Man. [Avengers Academy #26-27]

A couple weeks before the next big conflict, Juston called his father, who wanted Juston to come back home. Juston explained that joining Avengers Academy was the only way to keep his Sentinel, otherwise they would have melted it down into slag. His father became upset that Juston was choosing this machine over his own family, but Juston hung up. He had the Sentinel repeat its prime directive that it would never abandon Juston no matter what, and then told it that oath went both ways. [Avengers Academy #33]

When the Avengers and the X-Men went to war, many of the X-Men’s young mutants were kept in custody on the Academy grounds. At first, the Sentinel was meant to keep hidden, given the delicate nature of Sentinel/mutant relations, but it was brought in to secure the perimeter when the mutants attempted to leave. Its presence resulted in a fight that only ended when fellow mutant Academy student X-23 sliced open the cockpit where Juston was located, and convinced him to stand down. However, the fight renewed when Juston later brought back the Academy staff. On top of this, an amnesic Sebastian Shaw had escaped his holding chamber and escalated the brawl when it was assumed he was still the murdering villain of old. During the fight, Shaw managed to disable the Sentinel with a punch before fleeing into the ocean. [Avengers Academy #30-31]

While repairing the Sentinel a couple days later, X-23 confronted Juston on how a machine that existed to exterminate mutants should not be allowed to remain around them. Juston assured her that, despite not making the best choice of using the machine to help guard the young mutants, he had reprogrammed it not to hurt them any longer. Of course, he admitted that he couldn’t seem to fix the glitch where the machine would periodically declare the phrase “Destroy All Mutants!” X-23 asked the Sentinel to list out all of its directives and sure enough “Apprehend or destroy all mutants” was still listed as the final directive. Juston explained that he couldn’t remove it without erasing its mind, so he made it the least important directive with overriding commands prioritized. X-23 believed he should erase its mind, as it was only a machine programmed to kill, but Juston rebuffed this by claiming she had basically described herself. X-23 backed off when Juston argued that his “friend” should not be punished for what evil deeds it might do, just as she shouldn’t be either.

The war between the Avengers and X-Men soon came into focus yet again. The conflict seemed to be going the way of the X-Men when five of the mutants became empowered with portions of the Phoenix Force. One of the many changes the “Phoenix Five” decided to make with their massive power was to dismantle every Sentinel on Earth. Remembering that one such murder machine resided at Avengers Academy, Emma Frost returned to destroy it. The Sentinel quickly attacked the immensely powerful mutant, but it was quickly dispatched. Rather than melt down the Sentinel, Giant-Man convinced Emma to simply erase its central processing unit in order to remove its prime directive. Juston was not pleased with this compromise, as it meant erasing the personality of his friend that had worked so hard to be good. When Emma attempted to restrain Juston, the Sentinel attacked her, but it stood no chance. Juston could do nothing but watch on in horror as his best friend was battered around.

The tears of Juston, spurred X-23 to take his side and attack Emma before she could finish the job. This led to the entire Academy fighting the powerful Emma to protect their friend. The Sentinel managed to return to the fight and attack Emma from behind, but again it was quickly thrown to the ground. However, this time Emma was surprised to see that Juston was piloting the robot, but he was quickly thrown out of the cockpit. The Sentinel fought with a renewed vengeance to protect Juston, but it was reduced to just a metal frame by the flames of the Phoenix. Juston begged his friend to remember his prime directive to never abandon him, but for the first time the Sentinel overrode its programming and prioritized protecting Juston first. This heroic deed resulted in its destruction and Emma melting its central processing unit in front of a devastated Juston. However, this dour ending was avoided because Quicksilver had secretly swapped out the central processing unit at the last second. Hank Pym helped rebuild the Sentinel and reinstall the original personality of Juston’s best friend. [Avengers Academy #32-33]

Unfortunately for Juston and several other Academy students, a living nightmare was on the horizon. Juston and his Sentinel were kidnapped along with 17 other teenage superheroes by Arcade to participate in a competition to the death. Immediately, most of them tried to resist, but Arcade proved he had an extreme amount of power in his self-constructed Murderworld. Arcade attacked the Sentinel and the other teens before choosing one of Juston’s Academy classmates as the first to die in a demonstration of the real stakes involved. Juston decided to hide out alone with his Sentinel, repairing its systems to reboot it. He got it working just in time to be attacked by an unknown assailant. The Sentinel appeared to have no time to fight back before it was practically folded in half around Juston. [Avengers Arena #1-3]

Juston managed to survive the attack, but his Sentinel was in pieces. X-23, who had also been kidnapped, managed to find Juston, but she was blasted by a repulsor blast booby trap from an understandably cautious Juston. He was not in good shape, as he had been stuck in the desert for a week. Further, he felt abandoned by his friends and, worst of all, he was paralyzed from the waist down. He managed to get the Sentinel repaired enough to start walking so that he and X-23 could join some of the others. Juston was out for revenge though and made a beeline to the person who had attacked and paralyzed him. The one responsible was a technopath named Apex, who was a pacifist brother and psychopathic sister sharing one body. Apex currently was male and, after the Sentinel started a brawl among many of the remaining combatants, he used his power to shut all machines in the vicinity down. After the group voted not to murder Apex in cold blood, Juston tragically paid the price when the female side of Apex took over that night and murdered Juston in order to steal his Sentinel. [Avengers Arena #8-9]

With the Sentinel now under the control of an evil technopath, Apex had the Sentinel callously toss the corpse of Juston away. She then used the Sentinel to go on a murderous rampage in order to try to kill all of the other teens and win the game. However, despite the robot blowing off her arm, the Runaway and magician named Nico Minoru quickly managed to recover enough to use her magic to destroy the Sentinel and literally bury Apex. This actually sent her into the bunker, where Arcade was controlling Murderworld and also where he was storing all of the deceased teens' bodies, including Juston. [Avengers Arena #10,12,16]

Eventually Apex would get her comeuppance for killing Juston, and the some of the heroes would escape Murderworld. However, this would unfortunately be the end for Juston and his Sentinel, who had miraculously managed to overcome its programming enough to become a true friend.