Part Four: A Change is Going to Come
Though having been badly damaged before, the damage suffered by Nimrod was plainly near catastrophic. Possibly as a result of this, Nimrod remained inactive, or at least publicly so, for many months. During this intervening time, the impetus for Nimrod’s main drive – the destruction of the X-Men and the termination of the fugitive Rachel Summers – was eliminated without his intervention. Some months after their confrontation with Nimrod, the X-Men faced a mystical opponent called the Adversary in Dallas, Texas. While the nation and world watched via live television coverage, the X-Men sacrificed themselves to end his threat. As Rachel had not been seen since the battle in Central Park, Nimrod might easily have surmised that she died from her earlier wounds. [Uncanny X-Men #225-227]
In fact, both the X-Men and Rachel lived. The X-Men were reborn, thanks to the powers of the Omniversal Majestrix, Roma, and began to act in secret, based out of a new headquarters in the Australian Outback. Meanwhile, Rachel had become a prisoner of the magical woman known as Spiral and was held captive for months until she escaped. Upon her return, Rachel learned that the X-Men were believed dead and, instead of returning to the States, stayed with Captain Britain’s new team of Excalibur in the UK. [Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn]
Oblivious to this, Nimrod continued to operate, attempting to maintain the pretense of being a law enforcement entity. However, instead of the mutant populace, Nimrod began acting against the human criminal element. In one such raid, Nimrod attacked an apartment which served as a staging area for narcotics traffickers. In contrast to his purely lethal actions before, Nimrod actually gave the criminals the option of surrender. However, when they
declined, responding instead with gunfire, Nimrod reduced them to ash with disintegration rays. After then doing the same to their drugs, Nimrod took the money to use for philanthropic purposes. Nearly as an afterthought, he left behind a mark to act as a trademark for his action and to send a message to others of their ilk. It was a simple “N” charred into an even simpler handprint, burned into the door. [Uncanny X-Men #246]
By day, just as months before, Nimrod labored under the guise of being a normal, average human male. Previously, he had gone under the name of “Nimrod.” Now, however, he went under the guise of “Nicolas Hunter.” Further, he no longer worked at the fish market, but as foreman of an explosives crew on construction sites. While it is not clear, 
it does not seem that Jaime Rodriguez worked in the same job. Though there is no true evidence, it is very possible that Nimrod had been so damaged after his previous confrontation with the X-Men that he was unable to return to the Rodriguez home or was rebuffed when he tried. Though Jaime had seen Nimrod’s true form, it is possible that Jaime never learned Nimrod’s original purpose as a mutant-hunting machine. If he had learned this after Nimrod’s last confrontation with the X-Men, it would be very possible for Jaime to have expelled Nimrod, as Jaime had nearly done so with his own brother, Luis, after he expressed anti-mutant sentiments. [Uncanny X-Men #193]
Whatever the reason or relationship with the Rodriguez family, Nicolas Hunter now worked construction and it was on one such construction site that Nimrod’s existence would be changed forever. Some weeks before, the same site had been the location of a battle between another Sentinel known as the Master Mold. Originally built by a mutant-hating madman named Dr. Steven Lang, this Master Mold unit had had the mental engrams of its creator imprinted in its circuitry. After a confrontation with two of the X-Men and the Hulk in orbit, it had fallen to Earth, suffering massive damage in the process during which most of Lang’s personality was destroyed. Since then, it had journeyed from its landing spot offshore Alaska to Manhattan where it had been confronted and apparently destroyed by the group of young heroes known as Power Pack. [Incredible Hulk Annual #7, X-Factor (1st series) #13-14, Power Pack (1st series) #36]
Though apparently obliterated, the Master Mold sentinel survived, having been reduced to a small module of circuitry. There on the site of the battle, 
now a construction site, it had laid dormant for weeks, until contact with the far more sophisticated Nimrod model in human guise. Immediately, the Master Mold’s programming took control of Nimrod’s body, usurping its personality. How this more primitive model could have so easily taken over another unit decades more advanced is curious, however it is possible that Nimrod had been taken very much by surprise. Within mere moments, the Master Mold was reborn, quickly rebuilding its former body with materials at hand until it once again towered stories in height.
The commotion of events at the construction site drew the attention of the X-Men, who happened to be in the area. Though under attack, the Master Mold found itself unable to detect its attackers. After being resurrected by the Omniversal Majestrix Roma, the X-Men had been given a gift of invisibility against electronic detection. Further, the synthesis of the Nimrod unit was also a source of difficulty, as the Master Mold found its host unit resisting the process. Still, Nimrod was able only to complicate the process and not prevent it. Once completed, the Master Mold found that it was now able to detect the X-Men and acquire targets for elimination.
Despite this, the X-Men were still able to fight the Master Mold to a near standstill, reducing its body to simply that of a gigantic head. As the robot began to rebuild itself, incorporating present materials to do so, it soon became clear that theirs was a lost cause. However, in a stoke of inspiration, Dazzler considered the mystical artifact called the Siege Perilous. Given to them by Roma as a manner by which they could leave this life and start anew by being reborn, the Siege Perilous resembled a small amulet in its normal form, but could grow into an immense gateway through which one might step.
Postulating that the only way to win the day would be to send the Sentinel where it couldn’t do any more harm, Dazzler threw the artifact behind the giant head that was the Master Mold. Immediately, the Siege Perilous grew to a size to accommodate what remained of the Master Mold, but the Sentinel resisted still by constructing tentacles to anchor itself from the pan-dimensional portal. It was only due to the strength of Rogue, combined with the remnants of the Nimrod consciousness, that severed the Master Mold from its moorings,
sending it tumbling into the portal of the Siege Perilous. Still integrated, Nimrod suffered the same fate as the Master Mold, as did Rogue, who was being held by the Sentinel’s tentacles. Once the two (or three) entities crested the threshold, the portal closed and the Siege Perilous returned to that of an amulet. [Uncanny X-Men #247]
Still, this was never a definitive ending for neither Rogue nor the Master Mold (nor possibly Nimrod). An ancient, extra-dimensional, magical artifact, the portal of the Siege Perilous allowed those who pass through its threshold to be judged by the “highest of powers.” So judged, the individual’s good and ill are weighed in the cosmic balance and they are born again – given a second chance to redeem themselves. Indeed, the device was never to be an instrument of finality, but a chance at rebirth. Rogue herself emerged from the Siege Perilous some months later, reborn and given the chance to finally solve the problem of her merged personality with that of Carol Danvers’. However, years passed before it became apparent how the “highest of powers” had judged Master Mold or Nimrod, or what their infinite wisdom had determined. Even then, once its decision was made known, it called into question the wisdom of the judgment.
Even more curious, it seems that the Master Mold itself was not judged alone. The higher power considered the personality of Nimrod, which the Master Mold had striven to incorporate as part of itself, as an inseparable part of the Master Mold. As Nimrod’s own programming had been evolving over the previous months from that of a dispassionate, mutant hunting machine to one that cared for justice and that which was right, it could be that the higher power believed that there was value to leaving merged the personality looking for redemption to the personality seemingly beyond it. Additionally, with most of what was Steven Lang having died with the Master Mold months before, it could be argued that there was little to truly judge.
Whatever the reasoning or logic behind the higher powers, what was once two robotic entities would re-emerge as a man of flesh and blood. In time, the man would take the name of Bastion and his life would slowly but inexorably return to the world of Sentinels and, specifically, another Sentinel by the name of Nimrod.
Part Five: Ghost from the Machine
It is ironic that the quarry of Nimrod’s sojourn to the past, Rachel Summers, took the nom de guerre of “Phoenix” shortly after her arrival. Much like the mythical creature from which the namesake originated, so too did Nimrod rise from the ashes, reborn anew. Even if it was for but a short time.
Ever vigilant against threats to their fellow mutants, the small paramilitary unit known as X-Force regularly received and investigated rumors of anti-mutant activity. When word of an organization named the Tomorrow Agenda having achieved a breakthrough in artificial intelligence circuitry reached the group, X-Force investigated. Their worries mounted when their initial acquisition of a sample of the technology was confirmed by mutant inventor Forge as being over two decades more advanced than what should exist. 
While the government had possessed a Sentinel program for years, though being more or less inactive most of the time, X-Force leader Cable recognized the threat of the technology all too well. Having been from the future, Cable recognized this technology as being that which would eventually allow the Nimrod series of Sentinels to be designed in the future. [X-Force (1st series) #35]
Prompted by their need to know more, X-Force decided to infiltrate the Sentinel assembly facility at Camp Hayden, Kentucky. Unfortunately for them, upon breaching base security, they were detected – prompting an event they could not have foreseen. Without warning to even those manning the facility, the existing Nimrod tech activated itself, proceeding to then spontaneously create a body, replete with advanced weaponry and defenses. Nimrod was reborn.
Though having existed only for moments, Nimrod fought the well-trained X-Force to a standstill, felling even Cable during the battle. However, Nimrod was indeed given pause by the sonic scream of Siryn, the decibel level of whose shriek exceeded even Nimrod’s parameters, temporarily disabling it. While Nimrod worked to compensate, adapting itself to the attack, Cable decided upon a daring plan by linking Nimrod project director Dr. Hawkins’s mind via telepathy with that of Nimrod via Cable’s own techno-organic cybernetic arm.
Once in Nimrod’s mind, Dr. Hawkins and Cable learned the truth of his resurrection. Between the time of Nimrod’s arrival 
some years before and his apparent destruction when it, merged with the Master Mold, had traveled through the Siege Perilous, it had taken precautionary measures to ensure its survival. It had downloaded a self-awareness program into the base’s military computer cybernet, which served as a sleeper virus that awaited the opportunity to access a Sentinel development program it could use to re-create itself. Nimrod’s detection of the invading X-Force had caused it to act before it had originally intended to fulfill its imperative.
Speaking to this advancement of Nimrod’s personal timeline, Dr. Hawkins asked the Sentinel to extrapolate, based on hard data, what casualty figures its earlier creation in the timeline would cause. If, as Nimrod claimed, its imperative was to save humans by exterminating mutants in the here and now, how many more casualties would exist if it operated decades before it originally should have? Pausing in consideration, Nimrod ran the numbers as instructed and reeled as it determined the death toll rising from tens of thousands, to millions and eventually to a number incalculable. Finally coming to the conclusion that its mission was futile, Nimrod deactivated itself, powering down the powerful robotic body it had created not so long before.
With the crisis averted, Dr. Hawkins tried her best to avert the next before it arose. To Cable, Dr. Hawkins proposed that she remove the robot’s central neural net and give it to X-Force. Though without it the robot itself could not function, the Sentinel facility would be able to study its defensive systems and alloys. While they, as humans, deserved the chance to protect themselves from evil mutants, X-Force, as mutants, deserved the chance to defend themselves against fear gone mad. Accepting the deal as a fair compromise, X-Force departed. [X-Force (1st series) #36]