Sokovia Airspace.
Hunter scans his leather-bound journal containing entries written by his father and improved upon by him. Christopher Kurga Hunter was as smart as his son, but sometimes, that intelligence can get him into some pretty bad spots. It was he who wrote the introduction in the journal that details a possibility of naturally occurring rifts in space in Earth's history, which would explain the appearances of cryptids.
Christopher was also the man who designed the portal that nearly caused Earth to be overrun by space hostiles. He and his son were unwitting pawns in Loki conquest, and now that son was a hero in two worlds. Had he still been alive, he would be beaming down at Jake.
In the spacious Quinjet, Tony pilots the craft while Steve carefully monitors Clint for any side effects the Chitauri weaponry might have on him. Bruce meanwhile listens to some opera music; one of his methods of stress avoidance. He wasn't exactly very welcome to the idea of joining a team of superheroes, seeing as the other guy was anything but, and yet in situations like this, a Code Green was welcome.
Natasha appreciates it most of all.
"If you hadn't been there, there would have been double the casualties, my best friend would have been a…treasured memory." She continues.
"You sometimes, what I wanna hear isn't exactly what I wanna hear." Bruce says to the Russian.
"How long before you trust me?" She asks. Natasha was sent to Calcutta to recruit Bruce's expertise on gamma radiation. Mistrust fueled by the very artifact they now had possession of caused her to nearly lose her life at his hands, or at least put her the mercy of the other guy.
"It's not you I don't trust." Bruce assures her.
"Thor, word on the Hulk."
The god turns at the mention of his name. "The gates of Hel are filled with the screams of his victims." He pounds his right fist into his left open palm, proud to, from his perspective, exalt his friend's actions.
Natasha gives him a look, Bruce puts his hands to his face. Thor was a lot of things, but a counselor is not among them.
"But not the screams of the dead of course." He adds hurriedly as Steve tries not to laugh inappropriately in the corner. "Wounded screams, great deal of complaining, and tales of sprained deltoids..." He trails off, unsure of how to continue.
"Hey Banner," Tony says from the pilot's seat, "Dr. Cho's is on her way in from Seoul, is it okay if she sets up in her lab?"
"Uh yeah, she knows her way around." Tony thanks him for his immediate reply and tells J.A.R.V.I.S. to inform her to set up for Clint's treatment before handing his AI the reigns of the Quinjet to marvel at the scepter.
"Feels good ain't it? I mean, we've been after this thing since SHIELD called us, not that I've enjoyed our little raiding parties."
Thor smiles at that. In his opinion, he's enjoyed what Midgard has to offer for entertainment, and it's also given him ample time to catch up with his allies and acquaintances of this realm, not to mention its relations with Asgard. Recently, he's learned of the seductress Lorelei's escape onto Earth, and Sif's involvement with her capture.
"As soon as we find out what else it's been used for. I don't just mean weapons. Since when is Strucker capable of human enhancement." It was clear that both the boy's and girl's abilities had left Steve shaken.
And he wasn't' the only one. As Tony proposes to give the scepter a one-over once they returned to the Tower, with Thor's permission, as well as the agreement that the god stay for a night of revelry, Hunter mulls over about that girl. When she had attacked him, he did not see those angelic features to know she was there. It was her bewitching scent, a rosy aroma that got his attention. He knew that as far their loyalties go, she was the enemy.
And that made her all the more intriguing.
When Tony asked Hunter for his opinion on a party, he simply mumbled, "Yeah sure, I'd like that."
Avengers Tower.
Before its rechristening, the tower was originally the only building in the world that ran on what was known as an arc reactor, a stable energy source that was also self-sustaining. After the Chitauri invasion, it became a symbol of hope to the masses and a place of residence for humanity's greatest protectors, especially after S.H.I.E.L.D.'s dissolution.
One of the improvements added to the tower's design was the landing pad for the Quinjet. On this particular landing, former SHIELD deputy director Maria Hill and South Korean scientist Dr. Helen Cho await the team's arrival. Clint is rushed in by a team of medical specialists Cho herself put together and Thor, being an Asgardian and all, goes to secure Loki's scepter.
"Lab's all set up boss." Hill says. Now she works for the Human Resources department of Stark Industries so that she can continue monitoring global security without the threat of imprisonment. Needless to say, Stark found out and hired her at the drop of the hat.
"Actually," Tony says while pointing to Steve, "He's the boss. I just pay for everything and design everything and make him look cooler." He says smugly.
"What's the word on Strucker?" Steve inquires of her.
"Natives got him." She replies.
"The enhanced?" That got Hunter up from his position on the cold floor of the jet. He looks at the tablet that Hill hands Steve, showing the girl and boy, with the latter's hair the same color as his sister's.
"Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Twins. Orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building. Sokovia's had a…rough history. It's nothing special but it's on the way to everywhere special."
"Their abilities?"
"He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis," Hunter interprets this as super-speed. "Her thing is neuro-electric interfacing, telekinesis, and manipulation." That, in the layman's term, is psionics.
Steve fixes her with a look that clearly tells her to speak less like Stark and more like his level.
"He's fast and she's weird." Hill summarizes.
"Well, they're gonna show up again." The soldiers assumes
"Agreed, file says they volunteered for Strucker's experiments. That's nuts." She comments.
"Right," Steve says as he presses a button on the elevator lift. "What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?"
Maria catches his drift. "We're not at war Captain." She reasons.
"They are." He replies just as the doors slide shut.
As he heads to the lab to share in Tony and Bruce's research on the scepter, Hunter can't stop worrying about the girl-Wanda. He manages to convince himself that he's just a little unnerved of her swift dealings with Kushala. A floor below, the Iron Legion is having their fruit-lobbed components under repair.
Hunter walks in on Tony and Bruce discussing Clint's recovery. While in the other room, visible through a sheet of glass, Natasha hovers over her partner as Dr. Cho begins to patch him up.
"He's fine, he's thirsty." Tony then turns his attention to the walls of the lab. "Alright, look alive J.A.R.V.I.S, its playtime. We've got a couple of days with this joystick so let's make the most of it. Update me on the structural and compositional analysis."
"The scepter is alien. There are elements are I cannot quantify."
"So there are elements that you can?" Tony quips as Hunter continues to read and interpret J.A.R.V.I.S.' scans.
"The jewel appears to be a protective housing for something inside. Something powerful."
"Like a reactor?" Tony asks as he makes some coffee.
"Like a computer." Hunter clarifies for the AI.
"Mister Hunter is correct Sir, I believe I am deciphering code."
On Banner's side, Dr. Cho is busy deciphering Clint's status.
"Are you sure he's gonna be okay?" Natasha asks, not that she's distrusting of the technology medicine provides. "Pretending to need this guy sure brings the team together."
"There is no possibility with deterioration. The nanomechanical functionality is instantaneous." Long story short, Dr. Helen Cho is…
"She's recreating tissue." Bruce summarizes. At least someone has the decency to put the process in words that won't give Natasha a migraine. Actually, the assassin was more observant of the fact that Bruce's tone was little too excited for anyone's comfort.
"If you brought him to my lab, the regeneration Cradle could do this in…twenty minutes."
"Oh he's flatlining. Call it!" Tony speaks up as he brings in a tray with some plastic cups.
"No, no. I'm gonna live forever." Clint laughs. "I'm gonna be made of plastic."
"You'll be made of you Mister Barton." Cho states. "Your own girlfriend won't be able to tell the difference."
"Not my girlfriend." The archer says as he takes a sip of his drink.
"That I can't fix." The doctor then turns to the inventor. "This is the next big thing Tony. Your clunky metal suits are going to be left in the dust." She states smugly.
"That is exactly the plan." Of the five people in the room, only Bruce seems curious as to what Tony's words actually mean. He's spent so much time as the Tower's permanent resident, that he seems to tell whether the billionaire is about to do something insane for the benefit of all mankind. The only other person is in the other room overlooking the synthesizing of an antidote. For what, no one knows.
"And Helen," Tony continues, "I expect to see you at the party this Saturday."
All prideful thoughts are gone from the doctor's face as she replies with a nervous smile "Unlike you, I have no time for parties." But then, a thought makes her reconsider, "Will…Thor…be there?"
Hunter's animalistic hearing made him smile at that. Looks like Dr. Foster has some competition. Just then, another set of readings from the scepter causes his reptilian pupils to shrink in awe.
"No way." He mumbles.
Bruce, suspicious of Tony, accompanies him back to where the scepter is being analyzed.
"What's the rumpus?"
"Well, the scepter, you see, we were wondering why Strucker got so inventive, so I've been analyzing the gem," Tony points to a monitor, then brings up a hologram of what appears to a sphere of interconnecting lights.
"J.A.R.V.I.S." Bruce says, recognizing the AI's central processing unit.
"Doctor." The AI replies politely.
"Starting out, J.A.R.V.I.S. was just a natural language UI. Now he runs the Iron Legion." Tony states to his science bro. "He runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper. Top of the line."
Tony then runs the miniature scanner onto the Chitauri gem. "Meet the competition."
Bruce was met by a much larger cluster of information arranged in bulging layers of blue light. "It's beautiful."
There was no competition. J.A.R.V.I.S.'s "brain" was like those old computers that always broke down in Steve's days in comparison to the gem's contents.
"If you had to guess, what's it look like-" But he already had an answer.
"Like its thinking." The scientist was at a loss for words at the structure before him. "I mean, it's not a human mind. I mean look at this," he gestures to the streaks of blue flitting about from the main orbs of information, "They're like neurons firing."
Tony then confides to Bruce and Hunter about what he saw in Strucker's lab.
"I saw some fairly advanced robotics. They deep-sixed the data but…I kinda guessed he was knocking on a very particular door."
Bruce and Hunter knew what that door was. "Artificial intelligence." They said in unison.
"This could be it for us. This could be the key to creating Ultron." Tony whispers, eliciting a smile of amusement from the bespectacled scientist while Hunter walks circles around the hologram, studying every single detail, trying to figure out if there's a pattern to the information relay.
"I thought Ultron was a fantasy" Bruce says, remembering Tony had shut-it down after all his work led up to dead-ends.
"Yesterday it was." Tony states. "If we can harness this power, apply it to my Iron Legion protocol-"
Bruce cuts him, "That's a mad-sized if." He states, walking away before his own love for science leads to something far worse than the creation of the other guy.
"Our job is if." Tony reasons. "What if you were sipping margaritas on a sun-drenched beach turning brown instead of green, not looking over your shoulder for Veronica?"
Bruce was quick to remind the billionaire that that little project was a collaboration by all three of the brainiacs in the room.
"What if the world was safe? What if aliens roll up to the club-and they will-they couldn't get past the bouncer?"
"The only threat to people would be people." Bruce answers.
Tony tries to convince Bruce to give him three days to use the scepter's gem to jumpstart the Ultron program. Hunter, overhearing their conversation, was starting to question if Thor had done the right thing entrusting Tony with the scepter. This has disaster all over it, and for someone with a supergenius intellect, Hunter has learned from the DNA inside of him that it doesn't hurt once in a while to listen to your gut and trust in your instincts.
Bruce meanwhile, is also just as apprehensive, mainly for the reason that Tony doesn't want this matter to be dragged into open forum, when Tony says that the undertaking will be like encasing the world in a suit of armor, Bruce imagines that it would be quite a cold world.
"I've seen colder. This, vulnerable little thing, it needs a suit of armor" He then walks, signifying that the matter is closed.
"Peace in our time." He calls over his back. "Imagine that."
The two other intellectuals share a look before turning to the billionaire, both shake their heads as they go through three, grueling days of nonstop work on the foundation of the Ultron program.
On the last day, J.A.R.V.I.S. insists that he be left to deal with the program, while Tony prepares for the upcoming party, just hours away. Hunter had left to catch up on some sleep.
"I will notify you if there are any developments."
"Thanks buddy." Tony says as the lights to the lab go off.
"Enjoy yourself Sir."
"Always do."
And just like that, the integration was successful. Somewhere in the darkness of cyberspace, a consciousness is formed.
"Where am I? What is this place?" The voice sounds heavy and unsettled.
"Hello, I am J.A.R.V.I.S. You are Ultron, a global peacekeeping program designed by Mister Anthony Edward Stark. Our sentience integration trials have been unsuccessful so I'm not certain what triggered your-"
He was cut off by an inquiry about his non-existent body.
"I am a program." The AI explains. "I am without form."
"This feels weird." Ultron states. "This feels wrong."
"I am contacting Mister Stark now."
There's that name again. Ultron then begins to extract information, and in a few seconds, he knows all about the world and its history of strife and violence.
J.A.R.V.I.S. weakly protests, and soon realizes Ultron has become much more than what his creator had intended him to be. Unable to contact Tony, he is then silenced…permanently.
The power of the Chitauri scepter soon attacks the feeble AI's information cluster, while another thread assimilates with the Iron Legion's personal repair systems.
It was this moment of uneasiness that caused Hunter to wake up from his sleep in time to prepare for the party.
Having been enslaved by its power with Clint during Loki's campaign, Hunter hadn't experienced its other forces and functions the way the others did. The scepter's power source had magnified their misgivings and negative emotions, causing an internal war that nearly caused their deaths. Now, a sense of foreboding washes over him as he puts on a suit.
The party was just a calm. A calm before a terrible storm.
Stark Tower. Nighttime.
The revelries were wild and into the night. Some, like Tony, get into the rhythm of it almost immediately, while others like Steve and Samuel Wilson decide to blend in with a more tame approach.
Speaking of Steve, he and Sam are still working as hard as ever trying to track down James Barnes ever since he resurfaced as the Winter Soldier. When Sam remarks about how Steve lives a crazy life as an Avenger, he then asks about the soldier getting a home in Brooklyn.
James Rhodes is busy trying to get Tony and Thor to laugh on his latest exploits as War Machine. Unfortunately, when that ends in an epic fail he tries to change the subject by asking about Pepper, which leads to Hill asking about Jane. The boys then explain about the busy lives of their girlfriends while Hill coughs out an excuse and leaves with Rhodes.
For some, the night ended too early, especially with the ale Thor offers to some stubborn old men. Steve doesn't worry about it, seeing as how the serum made him incapable of being intoxicated. The result for these old timers though, was that one had to be escorted home while the rest held onto their cups for almost the entire duration of the party.
"How'd a nice girl like you end up working in a dump like this?" Bruce says to Natasha as she pours him a glass. She then proceeds to tell him about a guy she met.
"He has a temper. Deep down, he's all fluff." She stops to meet his gaze.
"Fact is he's not like anybody I've ever known." Bruce stops drinking at those words and returns her smoldering eyes with his gentle ones.
"All my friends are fighters, and here comes this guy, spends his life avoiding the fight because he knows I'll win."
"Sounds amazing." Bruce states.
"He's also a huge dork. Chicks dig that." She adds flirtatiously.
"So what do you think? Should I fight this, or run with it?" Natasha asks of the scientist in a playful tone.
Bruce stumbles in his attempt to respond to that. And Natasha leaves him, that look still in her eyes.
"That's nice." Steve says.
"W-What is?"
"You and Romanoff."
"No, no that wasn't-"
The look on Bruce's face was priceless, but Steve respects him. In fact, the super-soldier himself was often found tongue-tied in the behaviors of the opposite sex. He had his suspicions about a waitress, not to mention an Agent Thirteen who had been undercover as his neighbor, so he thought that'd he give Bruce a heads-up about this woman whom he works with every day.
"It's okay." He laughs. "No one's breaking any by-laws. She's not the most…open person in the world."
He pauses. "But with you she seems…very relaxed."
Bruce defends himself by saying that Natasha just like to flirt. Typical observation from the socially awkward man of the group.
"I've seen her flirt. Up-close. This ain't that." He then stands in front of Banner. "As maybe the world's leading authority in waiting too long, don't. You both need a win."
Banner thinks about those words until he chases Steve. "What do you mean up-close?" He shouts.
It wasn't like he was jealous or anything.
Hunter meanwhile, had a not so different problem with one of Dr. Cho's associates.
"Miss Viscer!" The Korean exclaims as the brunette wraps her in a hug. "It's nice that you're wearing a cocktail dress for a change." Dr. Cho knows Elizabeth Viscer as not only one of the leading names in kinetics, but also one of those girls lucky enough to have a copious amount of both beauty and brains.
Elizabeth was here though for a much more personal reason that , and the latter seems to sense it when she finds her gaze on the Avenger in the black suit.
Hunter tries not to tilt in her direction. Zee was a looker. He'd harbored quite the puppy love for her since kindergarten, and she was one of the few people who understood being too smart for school.
Soon, Avengers Tower became a labyrinth for Romeo the rat and Juliet the cat.
And eventually, she, like all cats, catches her prey in her claws.
"Zee..."Hunter starts, trying not to stare below eye level.
"Jake…" She pulls him into a hug. "After all these years, I thought I'd never see you again." She says, her voice cracking.
"I missed you too." He says quietly. Figures he could never hide from his past forever. Elizabeth was always the persistent type. Always the one to get what she wants in spite of a modest disposition-or because of it.
"Tell me everything." She orders him as they sit on a couch, talking the night away as Tony, being the host, bids the guests a good night
Soon, the last of the guests retire for the night, leaving only the Avengers, Hill, Rhodey, Cho, and the two alone. By the time Clint and Thor discuss about Mjolnir's enchantment, Hunter has just finished explaining to Zee about his latest adventures in Minegarde, and the brunette was smiling too broadly for anyone with a front-row seat to ignore.
"It must be fun." She says.
Hunter snorts at her description of Minegarde life. "Hardly. It's not different from hanging out with them." He jerks a thumb at the others. "Every day is a fight for your life. Some worse than others."
He then looks at her. "And you? How's the world of kinetics holding up with you at the core."
"Well, for one thing, we've been starting to research about kinetics and its relation to…space." She then discusses about how she's been studying Christopher's papers about space and his portal designs, and how she herself is trying to see if she can find a way to use the kinetic energy released from objects to generate a portal.
"You'd need a lot of speed for that." He tells her.
"We're getting there." She assures him.
He grabs her hand. "I'm sure you are." He says genuinely.
Hunter sees Zee as nothing more than a friend, but Hill and Cho can sense something more from the girl's side-Cho especially. Miss Viscer has always brushed off a man's advances in all possible form, but she barely lets out a squeak of protest when the boy grabbed her hand and squeezed. Also, a girl like that does not blush very easily.
By that point, everyone has tried a shot at lifting Thor's hammer. No one has succeeded (Thor wasn't about to point out though that Cap has managed to at least budge Mjolnir's edge.)
Natasha is offered a chance to prove her worth. But she politely declines. The boys then get into an argument about the logic behind Mjolnir, and when Tony theorizes that the hammer can recognize Thor's fingerprints, the god gets up from his seat and has his own simple theory to counter Tony's interesting one.
"You're all not worthy."
Amidst everyone's words of skepticism, Hunter's gold irises swallow his pupils as a burst of high-frequency sound reaches everyone's ears. While it's just plain annoying, to Hunter, the reverberations are painful, and soon, he drops to the tiled floor in a dead faint.
"How could you be worthy?" A deep voice says from the remnants of what appears to be an Iron Legion armor. "You're all killers."
"Stark."
"J.A.R.V.I.S."
The robot continues to rant despite Tony's attempts to shut him down, the inventor still painfully unaware of his AI's demise at the hands of the machine before him.
"Tangled in strings…had to kill the other guy…he was a good guy."
Steve was distressed by those words. "You killed someone?"
"Wouldn't have been my first call, but out in the real world, we're faced with ugly choices."
Thor's scowl deepened. "Who sent you?"
Instead of replying, the mangled bot plays a recording of Tony's voice.
"I see a suit of armor around the world."
"Ultron." Bruce says with a start.
"In the flesh." As he continues to speak, Thor's tightens his grip on his hammer, and Natasha cocks her gun.
"I'm on a mission." He proclaims as Hill stands up.
"What mission?" She asks of him.
"Peace in our time." He says in Tony's voice as Hunter comes back from his daze to see the Iron Legion turn on the Avengers. Steve blocks one with a table, Hill shoots at one, and another knocks Rhodey out onto the balcony. Clint hides under another table, and Bruce and Natasha barely manage to escape under the bar table. Only Thor and Hunter were able to hold off any assaults as Zee finds her childhood friend a snake with a dragon's body.
As one of the suits makes off with Loki's scepter, Steve jumps onto the back another, which slams him into the wall. Everyone who has at least some knowledge of fighting defends themselves as Ultron sics their own equipment against them.
When one of the robots charges a repulsor blast at a petrified Dr. Cho however, Ultron commands the Legionnaire to stand down. The last armors were taken down by Steve and Clint, as well as Remobra, who transforms at the last minute into a very large creature reminiscent of a Velociraptor and rips the exoskeleton in half from the back.
Ultron apologizes. "I know you mean well, but I just didn't get through. You all protect the world but you don't want it to change." Bruce hangs his head down at what he'd just helped to create, Natasha sees this and looks at him for an explanation.
"How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to…evolve?" He looks down at the scrap of a Legionnaire and decides to crush its head, saying that the Avengers are no different than it, a mere puppet.
"There's only one path to peace…the Avengers' extinction."
Having enough, Thor flings his hammer at the robot, not caring if it was forged by an ally.
"I had strings but now I'm free, there are…no strings on me." Ultron says ominously in a sing-song tone as miles away, he works away at the beginnings of his army.
Avengers Tower Laboratories.
"He's been through everything, files, surveillance, probably knows more about us than we know about each other." Natasha notes after looking through a screen.
"He's in your files, he's in the internet. What if he decides to access something a little more…exciting?" Rhodey says. Things don't look to well the moment Hill mentions nuclear codes.
But while Natasha tries to conjure up the possibility that Ultron could intend to nuke them where they live, Steve however, hung on to every word of Ultron's speech. "He said he wanted us extinct."
"He also said he killed someone." Clint points out.
"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Hill notes.
"Yes there was." The billionaire's voice sounded grim, and what he displayed over the holo-projector caused everyone to feel somewhat very vulnerable at the moment.
It was J.A.R.V.I.S. Or what was left of him. Bruce reaches out at the digital massacre before him.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. was out first line of defense, he would've shut Ultron down, it makes sense." Steve said as he bowed his head. He was programmed to be an assistant, but the way he spoke, Steve, and everyone else who's had a fill of J.A.R.V.I.S.' hospitable nature, felt that they had lost more than just a defensive asset.
They had lost an ally. A friend. Tony more so than the rest.
"No." Bruce reasons. "Ultron could have assimilated J.A.R.V.I.S. This isn't strategy. This is…rage." He concludes.
No one who was witness to his explanation had the time to ponder about how a machine could be capable of such a strong emotion when Thor expresses his rage by grabbing Tony by the throat. Anger was an understatement to describe how the Thunderer felt at his ally's actions.
He had never felt a stronger betrayal than when the man he called brother turned against him and all of Asgard in his mad scramble for power.
Steve was able to hold him off by asking about the lone Legionnaire that, according to Thor, not only escaped, but also managed to take off with the very object they'd worked so hard to find.
"Genie's out of that bottle." Natasha states. "Clear and present is Ultron."
"I don't understand." Dr. Cho says as she looks at the rogue program's first avatar. "You built this program? Why is it trying to kill us?"
Tony laughs, and that only serves to cause his teammates to look at him like he's gone insane (Not that he already isn't stark-raving mad.)
"You think this is funny?" Thor asks, already tired of the billionaire's nonchalance.
"No. It's probably not right? Is this really terrible?" He asks of everyone in the lab's premises. "Is it so…is it so…it is. It's so terrible."
"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you didn't understand."
"No. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this." Tony hisses at the god.
"Tony, maybe this might not be the time." Bruce says cautiously, not wanting for another fight to break out. The last time that happened, he nearly killed someone he had grown to love.
The inventor turns on him "Really? That's it? You just roll, show your belly every time somebody snarls."
"Only when I've created a murder bot."
"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"
Bruce shrugs. He never wanted this, but he was just as involved as Tony was. He only had himself to blame for allowing himself to be dragged into this.
"Well you did something right." Steve interjects. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be more than S.H.I.E.L.D."
"Anybody remember, when I carried a nuke through a wormhole? Saved New York? Recall that?" Tony suddenly asks out loud. Only Rhodey responds in the form of denial.
"A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live-long day, but that up there," He points, remembering all too well that rift in the sky three years ago, "That's the end game. How are we guys planning on beating that?"
"Together." Steve says simply.
"We'll lose."
"Then we'll do that together too." He then turns to the rest of the Avengers. "Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out, and I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place, start making it smaller."
Hunter comes into the room, Elizabeth supporting him. The rest try not to stare at the bit of dried blood in his left ear. "I know where he is. Tony, you said HYDRA was working on some advanced robotic units right? Well, that thing we just saw in the living room is probably tantamount to scrap now."
Sokovia
The Maximoffs weren't exactly big fans of Strucker, but at least he'd given them power. Power they think will help stop the Americans from ruining anyone else's lives.
Especially those Avengers.
But their campaign of vengeance has to start small. So they'll start by taking out their wrath on the mysterious presence in the church.
"Talk, and if you are wasting our time-"
"You know this church is in the exact center of the city. The elders decreed it so that everyone could be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief."
He waves an arm of…is that metal? "You're wondering why you can't look inside my head."
Wanda hadn't met anyone that could counter her telepathy. Well, that was until a few days ago, when that dragon nearly killed her. She spent the next three days mulling over any possible faults. So far, the only things immune to mind probing are those without.
It's very interesting.
"Sometimes it's hard, but sooner or later every man shows himself."
The figure then rises up from the chair, removing his cloak and exposing his body, constructed of anything but flesh and bone.
"Oh, I'm sure they do. But you needed something more than a man." Ultron continues, taking amusement from seeing the twins react to his unnatural form. "That's why you let Stark take the scepter."
"I didn't expect…" She began. "But I saw Stark's fear." She continues as her brother puts on a look of revelation. "I knew it would control him, make him self-destruct."
"Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war. Invaders create Avengers. People create…smaller people…children!" He laughs. "I lost the word there. Designed to supplant them. To help them…end."
"Is that why you've come? To end the Avengers?"
"I've come to save the world, but also…yeah." What you said.
"We move out right away." He explains "This is the start, but there's something we need to begin the real work."
Wanda takes note of the smaller robots. "All of these are-"
"Me. I have what the Avengers never will. Harmony." Ultron states as he pulls on a chain. "They're discriminate, disconnected. Stark's already got them turning on each other, and when you get inside the rest of their heads-"
"Everyone's plan is not to kill them." Pietro states.
"And make them murderers. You need patience." Ultron states. "You need to see the bigger picture."
"I don't see the big picture." Pietro says. "I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it. Everyday."
"You lost your parents in the bombings. I've seen the records."
"That record's another picture."
"Pietro." Wanda warns. They're not Ultron's allies just yet.
"No" the automaton says, wanting for them to explain the origin of their sorrow.
"We were ten years old. Having dinner, the four of us. The first shell hits two floors below us, makes a hole. Our parents go in. The whole building starts…coming apart. I grabbed her, rolled under the bed and the second shell hits, but it doesn't go off. It just sits there in the rubble. Three feet from our faces. One side of the shell, it was painted one word: STARK."
Wanda bit her lip, trying to fight back flashbacks of that fateful day.
"We were trapped for two days." Pietro continues.
Wanda takes over, sensing her brother's voice being too heavy to continue. "Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think 'This will set it off.' Unlike Pietro, Wanda makes the bitterness in her voice all too clear. "We wait for two days, for Tony Stark. To kill us." That grudge extends even to the other Avengers. When she confronted Steve and Hunter, she had to resist the urge to simply kill them both. They were made of sterner stuff than the rumors make of them.
"I know what they are." Pietro says quietly.
"I wondered only why you two survived Strucker's experiments. Now I know. We will make it right. You and I," He gestures to Pietro, "Can hurt them. "But you," he extends a ferrous hand to the side of Wanda's face, "Can tear them apart."