Oh hi there! It's-a me! Hope you all are liking how Tessa has been molded into Age of Ultron so far. As always, I claim absolutely no rights to anything Marvel! With that thrown out there, I'll let you get right to it! Enjoy! Xoxo-NickyLynn
When they had all made it back to the quin jet and were heading back to the tower, Tessa rushed over to Clint and began checking on him. Natasha had him laid out on the table in the center of the jet and his shirt was lifted up over his stomach, exposing the large wound on his abdomen. Tessa peeled back the bandage enough to take a peek at it. Inside, the wound was raw and angry, and most definitely not a normal bullet wound. Tessa let out a sigh at the sight before moving into gear and gathered all the supplies she needed to start an IV.
"How's it look?" Clint groaned out to her.
"Like you've been impaled by a lightsaber." Tessa told him honestly. "The ammunition of those weapons didn't just tear through; it seared your flesh."
"Is that why it smells like bacon in here?" Tony said from the front of the ship, having been piloting the craft through the open air high above the clouds.
Tessa rolled her eyes at his comment before pushing the drawer she had dug out a syringe from shut with her hip. She walked back over to Clint and began cleaning the crook of his elbow. "Well, on the plus side, the wound pretty much cauterized itself." She told him. "But, on the bad side, I won't be able to do much of anything to patch you up here. Little more complicated than just a simple stich job." She told him as she slid the needle into his vein and began hooking up the tubing to run the saline solution. "You're lucky it didn't hit any where else." She told him, glad it hadn't managed to graze any vital organs. The thought suddenly left her remembering the images she had been struck with down in the bowels of the facility, and had to shake her head to clear away the torment. "Tony, can you get Helen Cho on the line and have her meet us at the Tower?" she called up to him. "Tell he we was the perfect candidate for trying out that new device of hers."
"Whatever you say, Boss." Tony responded, doing as requested.
Clint let out a hiss of pain as she pressed down a clean bandage onto the wound, making sure it was thick and tight enough to last until they would make it back to the tower. "Sorry." Tessa muttered to him in apology. "Hey Nat, do you think you can grab me a vial of morphine out of the top cupboard?" Tessa asked as she finished wrapping his stomach in gauze.
Natasha stepped away from her before digging through the cupboard behind them and returning shortly after with a clear vial of the medicine. "Thanks." Tessa said grabbing hold of it and drawing some of it up into a syringe. She pushed the pain-quelling liquid into the IV drip and watched as Clint's muscles relaxed as the medicine began flowing through his system. "Just rest Clint." Tessa told him, giving a squeeze on his shoulder. "We'll get you back and fixed up soon."
Clint gave her a nod before his eyes slipped closed, and soon his breathing began slowing down as he was pulled into a drug-induced slumber. As Tessa brought her eyes back up, she noticed Bruce sitting across from them, headphones on and face drawn up in intense concentration. He had his thumb tracing his bottom lip, lost deep in what looked like tormenting thoughts. Tessa nudged on Natasha's shoulder minutely, garnering her attention from Clint before nodding her head in his direction with a lifted brow. Natasha took the hint and walked over to him, set on trying to calm his anxiety.
Tessa made sure Clint was resting peacefully before turning to the sink and washing the blood from her hands. Once she had them cleaned, she walked back towards Thor and Steve who were standing over the glowing scepter, coming to a stop in between them. She crossed her arms as she stared down on it, suddenly filled again with the images she was trying so hard to forget.
"Do you think Strucker was using this like Schmidt used the Tesseract on me?" Tessa asked then, looking over to Steve with furrowed brows.
"That's what I've been wondering." Steve told her.
"What exactly is this thing?" Tessa said then, directing the question to Thor. "It and the Tesseract's powers are so similar yet so different. Where did they even come from?"
Thor dropped his mouth open to answer before Natasha called back to them. "Thor! Report on the Hulk." She requested.
"The gates of Hel are filled with the screams of his victims." Thor responded, turning with his fist pumping in the air to enhance the dramatics. Tessa rolled her eyes at his poorly worded response, noticing Bruce's obvious discomfort at that statement. "Uh…but, not the screams of the dead, of course." He amened seeing Bruce drop his face. "No, no…wounded screams. Mainly whimpering…a great deal of complaining…"
Tessa reached over and hit Thor's arm with the back of her hand to make him stop digging the hole he was burying himself in unintentionally. "What he means," she said. "is that he did good. Hulk responded better than ever and targeted the enemies without hesitation. I think you give him less credit than he deserves, Bruce. He hasn't let us down yet and neither have you." She told him with a small smile.
"Banner, Dr. Cho is on her way in from Seoul." Tony said then, leaning back from the pilot seat, having just received the communication. "Is it okay if she sets up in your lab?"
"Uh, yeah, she knows the way around." Bruce said back to him.
Tessa dropped her focus back down to the glowing scepter then, finding it almost impossible to keep it from plaguing her mind. "To answer your question." Thor said, looking down at her. "I'm not sure. It…the Tesseract…the Aether…they're all relics from the dawn of time. I'm not sure anyone knows of it's true origins."
"Well, I think I'll feel much better when it's secured on Asgard and far from human hands." Tessa said with a sigh, rubbing the side of her neck.
"Feels good, yeah?" Tony said then, coming to stand behind Tessa, having left J.A.R.V.I.S. in control of the jet. "I mean you've been after this thing since S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed."
"Among other things." Tessa said under her breath, catching eyes with Steve briefly.
"Not that I haven't enjoyed our little raiding parties…but…" Tony continued then, causing Tessa to look back to him with a smirk.
"No, but this….this brings it to a close." Thor told him, his lips pulling up in a smile as well.
"As soon as we find out what else this thing has been used for." Steve added. "And I don't mean weapons."
"Yeah, Hydra seems to have a rather long history of human experimentation when it comes to these powers." Tessa said, her gaze dropping back down to the staff. "I wonder if they're willing participates or if we have more brainwashing to deal with." She mused.
"Either way, we'll give it a once over before it goes back to Asgard." Tony said. "If that's okay with you." He added, looking between Tessa and Thor, knowing it wasn't really up to him. "Just a few days until the farewell party, and then…"
"It's fine." Tessa told him. "I actually wanted to look over it anyways. There's something about this thing." She said, bringing her hand out, holding it in the air over it. She felt its power calling out to the power inside her, bringing her eyebrows together as so concentrated on the feeling. She swore she could almost hear it whispering to her. She pulled her hand back then, bringing her eyes back up to Thor, pulling herself from the thought. "You're staying right?" she asked him, finding that he had actually missed him while he had been away.
"Yes, yes of course." Thor told her. "Victories should be honored with revels."
"Yeah, who doesn't love revels." Tony said before looking over to Steve. "Captain?"
"Hopefully this puts an end to the Chitauri and Hydra." He said, bringing his eyes up from the staff to look over at the others. "So, yes, revels." He agreed with a smile.
"Careful Steve, too much reveling, and we might break a hip." She joked, knocking her hip into his.
"Don't worry, we'll have an ambulance on standby should any of you elderly folk take a fall." Tony shot over to her with a smirk.
"Better watch it, Anthony." Tessa warned, pointing a finger at him. "You're about to get your ass handed to you by a bunch of elderly folk." She told him.
"Oh calm, down before I put you in a home, Grandma." He told her with a roll of his eyes as he moved back towards the front of the plane.
The rest of the flight went by quickly and soon Tony was bringing them back down into Manhattan airspace. "Tony, can you alert Dr. Cho that we're approaching." Tessa called up to him, getting ready to transfer Clint over to a proper cot as soon as they touched back down. She wrapped her powers around Clint's body, making sure to keep even pressure all along his frame as Tony swung them around and brought them down towards the tower.
"Dr. Cho is on her way to meet us in the hanger." Tony called back to her as he carefully brought them back down onto the launch pad built into the side of the building. He dropped them down onto the extended piece of the tower and the mechanical cylinders latched onto the feet of the jet, pulling them back inside as Tony powered down the craft. Tessa carefully lifted Clint from the bed, up into the air, with her powers, making sure she kept him as flat and undisturbed as possible as she brought him back towards the back hatch that Tony had dropped open.
She maneuvered Clint out of the jet, Thor and Steve stepping out of her way to give her enough room to get Clint out. She could see Dr. Cho running down the length of the hall, a bed wheeling along beside her, along with her crew of assistants. Tessa stepped over to her, bringing Clint through the air as they all met up in the middle. Tessa carefully lowered him down onto the transportable bed, making sure he was deposited gently before withdrawing her powers from around him. "There's been extensile damage done to the right lumbar region." Tessa told the Korean geneticist they had hired as Tessa was sick and tired of waking up in hospitals. She was a remarlably brilliant woman and her advances with cellular regeneration was incredibly handy. "The flesh has been burnt by the blast, making internal damage hard to estimate. He's lost maybe a pint and half of blood. Ten milligrams of morphine has been administered two hours ago." She rattled off, keeping up with the group as they all ran down the hall, pushing the injured man along.
"Have vitals been stable?" Cho asked her.
"As much as would be expected." Tessa told her. "BP and heart rate has dropped lower than I'd like, but nothing sending off huge red flags."
"Good. Thank you, Tessa, we'll take him from here." The doctor said as Tessa came back down to a walk as they continued down the hall without her.
"I'll stay with him." Natasha said, rushing past her, moving to keep up with Clint.
"Alright. I'll be down in a bit." she called out to her as Natasha ran through the corridor, latching onto the side of the bed as soon as she caught up to them.
Tessa came to a stop as she watched them round a corner and disappear from sight. "Where do you want me to bring this?" Thor said from behind her, causing Tessa to turn to find him walking towards her, carrying the case which housed the scepter.
"We'll bring it down to the lab as well." She told him, nodding in the direction the others had last been seen. They began walking along side each other, moving towards the lab, Tessa's eyes dropping down to the glow of the scepter as they went. "It's strange." She commented, looking back to Thor. "So much has changed since I first came across that thing." She continued, looking back down at the staff with furrowed brows.
"Much has happened in the years since Loki brought the Chitauri here." Thor said in agreement as they continued along though the hall.
The mention of Loki's name sent Tessa's back going rigid as memories that plagued her began to surface. "How have you been doing Thor?" she asked him, trying to push past them. "How are things back on Asgard?" she asked, not having actually caught up with him in what felt like ages.
"In truth, I'm not sure." Thor told her with a sigh. "I haven't spent much time there. I've been too busy dealing with everything that Odin has grown comfortable in ignoring. The realms have been falling into chaos again, yet he does nothing. He's changed."
"Yeah, well losing the people you love most tends to change a person." Tessa sighed, rubbing her head as a wave of guilt washed over her. "What about you? How are you?"
"I've been….managing." he told her, not bothering to hide the fact that he had been struggling the same as her.
"And Jane? Have you gone to see her recently?" she pressed.
He gave her a tight-lipped smile. "I'm afraid Jane and I are better suited to remain friends and nothing more." He told her.
Tessa bit her lip as she looked back forward, not sure what to say to that news. She knew that Thor had really grown fond of Jane, but she also knew the drastic differences between the two, and honestly, a relationship between the two would be insanely complicated at best. "I'm sorry." She finally chose to say.
Once they were down in the lab, Tessa's eyes slid over to the room where they had brought Clint, seeing them set up the device Helen had created through the clear glass walls that surrounded them. Tessa and Thor walked over to the other side of the lab, where they did all their shared experimenting and tinkering, Tessa taking the scepter from Thor's hand with her powers. She brought it over to the table where she pulled up an electromagnetic base to house the device in. She brought the scepter above the pad, letting it float in the air above it as a wall of energy surrounded it, holding it in place as Tessa withdrew her powers. She crossed her arms, staring at it as it floated in the air before her.
"Are you okay?" Thor asked her, noticing her serious look.
"Yeah." She said, shaking her head and pulling her eyes away from it. "I'm going to go get myself cleaned up. I'll be back in a bit." She told him before disappearing from the room in a burst of blue energy. When Tessa landed in her apartment, she let out a sigh. The truth was, she wasn't okay. She couldn't seem to shake the strange images of her dead friends from her mind, and it was really beginning to bother her. A feeling of dread had sunk into her chest…..and she had no idea why. Tessa got herself showered and changed, trying to ignore the strange feeling as best she could before bringing herself down to the labs again.
She first checked in on Clint, noticing that he was awake again. "How's he doing?" Tessa asked as she stepped into the room, looking from Natasha down to Clint, who was laying under the regeneration machine, it working on patching him up. To put it in the simplest terms possible, the machine worked as a 3-D printer, but instead of printing plastic, or metal, it printed flesh. It was a remarkable piece of technology and Tessa had been blown away by the doctor's brilliance on creating it. Clint was currently getting new flesh printed into his wound, but as remarkable as the machine was, it wasn't the main device she had created back in how own lab, and as such, this one took time.
"He could really use a glass of scotch." Clint said groggily, looking up at Tessa as she stepped up by his head next to Natasha.
"He's fine." Natasha said then, rolling her eyes.
"There's no possibility of deterioration." Helen told her. "The nano-molecular functionality id instantaneous. His cells don't know they're bonding with simulacra. If you brought him to my lab, my Regeneration Cradle could have done this in twenty minutes." Helen said, looking down to check on the progress it had made on his wound. "But it seems to be running smoothly, it will just take a bit longer."
"Good. Let's celebrate my non-death with a drink." Clint told everyone.
"You've still got a high level of morphine kicking around your system Clint." Tessa told him. "You can have your celebratory drink tomorrow."
"Ugh." Clint groaned. "Party pooper."
Tessa smiled down at his disappointed face before she caught sight of Tony entering the other side of the lab through the glass. "I promise to supply you with copious amounts of alcohol after you get all healed up." Tessa told Clint. "Just focus on getting some rest until then."
"Yeah, yeah." He grumbled out, letting his head fall back onto the metal table.
Tessa gave Natasha a pat on the arm before turning to Helen. "Speaking of parties, are you going to be at the party Saturday?" she asked.
"Well, I don't have a lot of time for parties." The young doctor responded, before dropping her gaze. "But- uh, will your brother be there? Thor?" she asked shyly, a pink hue taking over her cheeks.
The corner of Tessa's lips pulled up at her obvious crush for her brother. "He'll be there." She confirmed before she caught sight of Tony walking into the lab through the glass wall. "Thanks again Helen, your work never ceases to amaze me and I hope to see you there." She told them woman with a wide smile before flashing over to the other side of the glass walls, dropping beside Tony as he strode towards Bruce. "How's he doing?" Tony asked her.
"Unfortunately, he's still Barton." Tessa informed him with a roll of her eyes. "He's fine….he's thirsty."
"The regeneration device working good?" Bruce asked her as he walked past, his attention focused on the tablet in his hand.
"Better than expected." Tessa responded, getting a nod from him.
"Good, wanna help me take a proper look at this bad boy?" Tony asked her then, motioning towards the floating scepter.
"Absolutely." She told him, following him over towards it.
"Alright, look alive, J.A.R.V.I.S.. It's playtime." Tony called out, bringing up the A.I. "We've only got a couple of days with this joystick, so let's make the most of it."
"I take it you've been having Jar run a full analysis on it." Tessa commented as they stepped up to it, noting the holographic display pulled up around it.
"Yup. Give us an update on structural and compositional analysis, J." Tony instructed the A.I. system.
"The scepter is alien." Came J.A.R.V.I.S.'s reply.
"Yeah, no shit." Tessa scoffed.
"There are elements I can't quantify." It continued.
"But there are some you can?" Tony asked.
"The jewel seems to be a housing unit for something inside. Something powerful." J.A.R.V.I.S. informed them.
"Okay Jar, you've got to give us something here." Tessa said with a sigh. "We already knew that. Can you identify the power source? What's the signature looking like?"
"Like a reactor?" Tony asked it.
"Like a computer." It said instead, causing Tessa's eyebrows to furrow down. "I believe I'm deciphering code."
"Code?" Tessa questioned. "Are you sure?" she asked it.
"It will take me another hour or so to fully analyze it, but the signature bares a remarkable resemblance to a computer system." J.A.R.V.I.S. said.
"Huh." Tessa said, dropping down into a rolling chair as she thought over the revelation. "Well, that's not what I was expecting."
Tessa sat and waited for J.A.R.V.I.S. to finish his breakdown, all while staring off at nothing in particular, her confusing thoughts pulling her into the depths of her mind. When he was finished, Tessa and Tony shared a look, both of them surprised by what they found. "I think Bruce might want to get a look at this." Tony said, pulling his eyes from the display, over to Tessa.
"Yeah, I'll go find him." She told him, before teleporting out of the room. The first place she had looked was his apartment, which is exactually where she found him. She told him they had something he needed to see before grabbing onto him and bringing him back down to the lab with her.
"What's the rumpus?" Bruce asked her as she dropped her grip on him and walked back over to Tony.
"The scepter." Tessa told him.
"You see, we were wondering how Strucker got so inventive." Tony began, pulling out a display pad and giving it a flick, sending the display out as a large holographic image that surrounded Bruce in a ring of orange light. "You may recognize…" Tony said as Bruce stepped out of the hologram.
"J.A.R.V.I.S." Bruce said, greeting the A.I. system as he recognized what he was looking at.
"Doctor." It responded.
"You see, J.A.R.V.I.S. first started out as a natural language U.I. Now he runs the Iron Legion and more of the business than anyone." Tony explained.
"Well, other than Pepper." Tessa added with a raised shoulder and smirk.
"Other than Pepper." Tony added for himself.
"We've been working with J.A.R.V.I.S. for years." Tessa said, taking over. "We update him on a regular basis, always giving him access to every new piece of knowledge or technology we can get ahold of. I mean, I feel pretty confident in saying that this system is the best in the world." She told him.
"Top of the line." Tony agreed.
"I suspect not for long." J.A.R.V.I.S. said then.
"Meet the competition." Tony said, flicking out the display pad again, sending out the image he and Tessa had been staring at earlier next to J.A.R.V.I.S.'s own image. The blue hologram showed what J.A.R.V.I.S. had been able to analyze and recreate of the gem, and it was beyond anything Tessa had been able to imagine. It was like the energy trapped inside the gem had its very own mind. Like it was living and thinking, just not breathing.
"It's beautiful." Bruce said, walking around it.
"If you had to guess, what's it look like it's doing?" Tony asked him.
"Like it's thinking." Bruce responded, deriving the same thought they both had.
"Exactually. This energy….whatever it is…it may not be flesh and blood, but it's alive." Tessa said, her eyes watching Bruce's reaction.
"T-this is…." He began, circling it in wonder. "This could be….I mean…this is amazing." He said, not knowing what else to say. "I mean look at this…it looks like-"
"Neurons firing?" Tessa supplied for him, pulling his gaze away from the hologram and over to her. "When I was down in Strucker's lab I came across all sorts of projects they had been in the process of working on. And a lot of it was pretty advanced robotic work." She told them both. "With what we were able to discover in just a few hours with the scepter…there's no doubt Strucker was able to figure this out from himself. And between that and the vast amount of robotics down there…"
"It's pretty obvious he was knocking on a very particular door." Tony filled in for her.
Bruce looked between the two of them with eyebrows drawn down in thought. "Artificial intelligence?" he asked.
"And not like J.A.R.V.I.S." Tessa said, tipping her head towards its hologram. "This system could open up the door to true A.I….a fully functioning mind without any of the restraints that come with human error."
"This could be it, Bruce." Tony said, stepping closer to the other man. "This could be the key to creating Ultron." He told him, referring to the dream they had put together of a world watched over by an I.A. system that could help lessen the burden thrust upon them all.
Bruce let out a breath of disbelief. "I thought Ultron was a fantasy." He said.
"It was." Tessa said. "But if we can finish cracking this puzzle….if we could actually harness this…"
"We could apply it to my Iron Legion protocol and maybe, just maybe have a shot of turning fantasy into reality." Tony told him.
"Well, that's a pretty big if." Bruce told them both, bringing his fist up to his chin in thought.
"Our job is if." Tony told him. "What if you were sipping margaritas on a sun-drenched beach, turning brown instead of green? Not looking over your shoulder for Veronica." Tony asked him, bringing mention of the satellite system that had been put into orbit that contained very powerful counter-measures against the Hulk should he ever feel like not cooperating.
"Don't hate." Bruce told him. "I helped design Veronica."
"As a worst-case measure, right?" Tony pressed. "How about a best-case? What if the world was safe? What if next time aliens roll up to the club, and they will, they couldn't get past the bouncer?"
"The only people threatening the planet would be people." Bruce responded.
"I want to apply this to the Ultron program." Tony reiterated. "But J.A.R.V.I.S. can't download a data schematic this dense. We can only do it while we have the scepter here. That's three days. We just need three days."
"So….you're going after artificial intelligence and you don't want the team to know." Bruce gathered, his eyebrow raised up as high as it would go.
"Yeah, that's right, because we don't have time for a city-hall debate." Tony told him. "I don't want to hear the whole 'man was not meant to meddle' melody." He told him, hoping he would see why it was necessary to keep the others from knowing about this just yet. "I see a suit of armor around the world."
"Sounds like a cold world, Tony." Bruce said, before looking over to Tessa. "What about you, you're really okay with this?" he asked her, motioning over the hologram display.
Tessa licked her lips as the images she had seen in Strucker's lab washed over her again, the sounds of her friend's screams filling her mind before it flitted over the faces of everyone she actually had lost. "I've had to save the world three times in the past few years." She finally said. "And any one of those times I could have failed. Hell, I did fail. I've failed more times than I can count. What happens if we're not strong enough to stop the next threat? What happens if one of these times I fail, and it's not just one or two people who pay the price, but millions?" she asked, the weight of everything she had to deal with pushing her down too much. "I know this isn't ideal." She said with a sigh. "But I would give anything to know that it's not just our shoulders that the fate of the world rests on for once."
"This world needs Ultron." Tony said as Bruce processed her words. "Peace in our time…..imagine that."
Bruce looked back over to Tessa and she could see the wheels in his head turning. He let out a sigh and Tessa could tell by the sudden switch in his features that he was on board. "Well boys," she said, clapping her hands together. "Let's get to work." She said with a smirk.