Part Six: Arrival – redux
[Note: The section that follows will undoubtedly be controversial with many readers. However, given the conflicting information, it is the best scenario in which all data fits. The reasoning for the choices made in this section can be found in “Part: Seven – Argument.”]
With the destruction of the Trojan self-awareness program which had been secreted into mainframes so long ago now destroyed, and the original Nimrod unit having been reborn as a new entity, it seemed that the threat of Nimrod was now over. However, this was not to be. Upon arriving in the past, the Nimrod unit had quickly realized that it had moved cross-time, as well as backwards in time. The reality into which he had arrived had not been his own. As other realities existed, an infinite number or so claimed, there stood to reason that at other Nimrods existed in other cross-times.
In one such reality, another Nimrod plotted to travel into the past, much like his counterpart from the Days of Future Past timeline. Unlike that Nimrod, which managed to accomplish the feat with a near instantaneous duplication of Rachel Summer’s jaunt, this other Nimrod required assistance. So, it traveled to the tower known as Eagle Plaza in Dallas, Texas, home of the mutant inventor Forge, known in this timeline as the Maker. There, the Nimrod unit bypassed security defenses and, before anyone could react, murdered the Maker’s wife, Storm. Then threatening to do likewise to Maker’s two children, Nimrod extorted the mutant into modifying it so that it could travel back in time. [New X-Men (2nd series) #29]
Unfortunately for Nimrod, a critical malfunction occurred when the time device negatively affected its systems. Even more unfortunate for Nimrod was that his arrival was witnessed by a fallen man by the name of William Stryker, who saw in Nimrod a chance to gain back all that he had lost. William Stryker had been a religious fanatic whose fundamentalist version of Christianity linked mutants with the spawn of Satan. This zealotry had led him to create a paramilitary group called the Purifiers, who committed hate crimes against mutants. The actions of he and his Purifiers had led Stryker to being
arrested and imprisoned for his crimes. Eventually released, he once again began his self-appointed crusade, only then to begin to question his beliefs. It was at this low point in his life, his faith shattered, that led William Stryker to the abandoned church in Dallas, which happened to exist on the same location where, in a world cross-time and some decades hence, existed the Maker’s Eagle Plaza. It was by this happenstance that William Stryker witnessed the arrival of Nimrod. [X-Men: God Loves Man Kills, X-Treme X-Men #25-30, New X-Men (2nd series) #20, 29]
Having been on the verge of suicide, Stryker saw the arrival of the angelic-like Nimrod as a sign that he had not been abandoned. His faith restored, Stryker took the barely functioning Sentinel and eventually reunited with like-minded individuals with the resources to exploit it. Whether these were the same 
Purifiers or a new group is unclear. However, it is clear that Stryker and his acolytes understood enough how to exploit the phenomenal resource that they had obtained. In addition to new technologies gleaned from what systems of Nimrod they could understand, Stryker also accessed historical data. Through this, he was able to make “predictions” for world events, such as an earthquake in Central American or an airline disaster in Colorado. Proclaiming himself a prophet, whose power of foresight was a “gift from God,” Stryker built a vast evangelical organization, under whose guise of legitimacy the Purifiers could clandestinely operate.
In building this organization, Stryker relied heavily on Nimrod’s historical data, using the data to recruit average individuals by narrowly averting everyday tragedies in their lives. Through this procedure, Stryker obtained a core group of fanatical disciples, who would enact his ultimate plan, which was to be enacted with a world-wide “miracle” he had been predicting. The event in question turned out to be the day that would quickly be named “M-Day,” in truth an instantaneous moment during which the world population of mutants would be reduced from the millions to barely hundreds by the reality-altering powers of the Scarlet Witch. Though the cause was unknown, Reverend Stryker used it as a rallying cry to attack the Xavier Institute, murdering dozens of students in two attacks.
Bolstered by the first assault, the murder of former students, mutants having been de-powered by M-Day, in a rocket attack, 
Stryker launched a second attack with his Purifiers on the mansion itself. However, Stryker had been fooled by what he had believed to have been the helpless Nimrod. Though the Sentinel had indeed been providing historical data to Stryker, it had likewise been altering key facts. Its hopes were that, if Stryker could be convinced to launch an attack against the stronghold of the X-Men with data that convinced him he would be victorious, Nimrod could rid itself of its captors – and escape. [New X-Men (2nd series) #24-27]
While the attack took place, an attack from which Stryker would indeed not survive, Nimrod broke free, killing the two Purifiers left behind. Low on energy and having had key systems cannibalized by Stryker for the attack, Nimrod utilized its teleportation circuitry to transport to Eagle Plaza in Dallas, the home of Forge in this timeline. Just as it had done with “the Maker” from its own era, Nimrod threatened to kill the one for whom Forge cared most: Storm. Even though she was now in a relationship with someone else, the Black Panther, Forge agreed to comply.
Though promising compliance, Forge moved to secretly resist. His first gambit was to secretly transmit an image of his plight to the Xavier mansion, in hopes that it would be viewed by the X-Men. Unsure of whether the message was received, he proceeded with a secondary plan, whereupon he offered Nimrod an alternative to repairing its body, as Forge declared it too advanced for even his skills to restore. Instead, Forge offered an alternate body, an unfinished robot which he had been working on just before Nimrod’s arrival.
In truth, Nimrod had few options, as it had already detected the pending arrival of the New X-Men. Unknown to Forge, the group had indeed received Forge’s warning and were on their way in an X-jet. As such, Nimrod accepted the bargain and began to make a transfer. Unfortunately for Nimrod, the offer had been a trap. The robot body had originally been designed to have been an anti-Sentinel robot, programmed instead to protect humans and mutants. Activating the programming, Forge immediately overrode Nimrod’s programming, supplanting its personality with the compliant anti-mutant robot’s. However, when Forge sent it to protect the New X-Men from other robots of Forge which Nimrod had just previously re-programmed to attach the youths, the reprogrammed Nimrod was damaged and, upon rebooting, Nimrod’s personality was once again dominant.
Immediately transforming his new body to what his old one once was, Nimrod was reborn and as deadly as ever. Immediately, the New X-Men found themselves outmatched and barely able to stay alive. However, a chance opening provided by Mercury, who opened a gash in Nimrod’s chest, allowed Surge to reach directly into the Sentinel’s torso and pour massive amounts of electricity. Though not critically damaging to the Nimrod unit itself, the electrical surge overloaded the chronal device installed within, causing it to activate itself and transport Nimrod away, though time and space. Still reeling from the attack as it drifted in the nothingness between the past and the present, Nimrod attempted to reboot its systems, while backing up its prime objectives. [New X-Men (2nd series) #28-31]
It seems that the place to which Nimrod arrived was a point further in the past. In fact, it was the same time and location that another Nimrod had arrived in the same timeline, inadvertently summoned by Doctor Strange to prevent the alteration of reality by Kulan Gath. [Uncanny X-Men #191, New X-Men (2nd series) #31] However, problems exist between the timeline of the Nimrod that had arrived at that time, to kill the mugger who was on the verge of murdering Jaime Rodriguez, and this Nimrod, which had arrived from a similar but clearly different future. As a result, it is most likely that this Nimrod unit arrived in similar, but different past and yet exists in another cross-time reality. Until elaborated upon, however, it will remain unclear.
One thing that is clear, however, is that not all of Nimrod had departed. Though this Nimrod unit had traveled back in time, it had done so utilizing the body transformed from the robot built by Forge. Its original body, on the verge of catastrophic malfunction when it had transferred its consciousness to the new one, had been left behind in the rubble of the demolished Forge’s Eagle Plaza. Somehow, before it could be disposed of by Forge or any of the X-Men, what remained of Stryker’s Purifiers reclaimed the robot and secreted it away to a facility in North Dakota, disguised as a church.
Through the previous two years, Stryker had obtained whatever technology he could have from the robot. So now, without the database or 
artificial intelligence within, the Sentinel was less than useless. However, one of the Purifiers formulated a daring plan and, through guile and subterfuge, obtained the head of Bastion, which had been held in secret for some time. Through their network of intelligence, the Purifiers were aware of Bastion’s past and knew that Nimrod had appeared further in the past, whereupon it had merged with the Master Mold and, after a trip through the Siege Perilous, had been transformed into a semi-human who eventually went by the name of Bastion. Though Bastion’s meteoric rise to power had been mirrored only by his fall from grace and humanity, what remained of him had not perished.
Hoping that what he once was could be so again, the Purifiers replaced the head of Nimrod with that of Bastion’s. Almost immediately Bastion was reborn, quickly transforming the damaged robotic body into one that resembled the human form he had once worn. However, what remains of the mind of Bastion, which had been greatly manipulated by a technological entity called Mainspring, is unknown. Time will undoubtedly tell. [X-Force (3rd series) #1]