And here we go. Moving things along! Can you believe we're already at chapter 60?! Holy crap! As always, here's that good old disclaimer that I have no rights to anything Marvel! I own Tessa and her story alone, which I hope you are all enjoying where it has been going! Enjoy this next bit! Xoxo-NickyLynn
Tessa was staring down at the empty carcass that had once been Ultron, lost deep in thought. She was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that, remarkably, she had done it again. Despite how hard she tried to make things better…to protect the people she cared about….she had managed to royally fuck up…again.
"All our hard work is gone." Bruce was saying. "Ultron cleared out. He used the internet as an escape hatch." He said, having gone through the systems to determine just what the hell happened. They were all gathered down in the labs, everyone (rightfully) upset by the situation they had found themselves in.
"Ultron." Steve repeated coldly, having been unbelievably disappointed by Tony, Bruce, and Tessa's choice to create a dangerous A.I. without even talking it over with the others first. However, it was his sister who he was the most disappointed in. He would have thought that she of all people who have known better.
"He's been in everything." Natasha told everyone. "Files, surveillance. He probably knows more about us than we know about each other." She said, crossing her arms and leaning against the counter behind her, letting out a deep sigh.
"He's in your files. He's in the internet. What happens if he decides to access something a little bit more exciting?" Rhodey said, striding across the room.
"Nuclear codes." Maria supplied, realizing just how easy it would be for the A.I. system to break through government firewalls.
"Nuclear codes." Rhodey echoed in agreement. "Look, we need to make some calls. Assuming we still can."
"He said he wanted us dead." Natasha said.
"He didn't say dead. He said extinct." Steve corrected.
"He also said he killed somebody." Clint reminded them.
"Yeah, but there wasn't anyone else in the building." Maria said, having swept the entire building herself.
"Yes, there was." Tony said, bringing up the display hologram of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s 'brain' in the center of the room for everyone to see. Tessa pulled her eyes off of the metal in front of her and looked over to the disfigured image of what was once the beautiful A.I. system she and Tony had spent years creating. She caught eyes with him, and she could see the conflict in them reflecting her own.
"What?" Bruce said in disbelief, stepping up to the obliterated image of J.A.R.V.I.S. "This is….this is insane." He chose to say.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. is our first line of defense." Steve said with a sigh, shaking his head. "He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense."
"No." Bruce told him. "Ultron could have assimilated J.A.R.V.I.S. This isn't strategy…this is…" he said, not knowing how to describe the amount of damage done to the operating system.
"Rage." Tessa said quietly, bringing all eyes on her for the first time. Suddenly Thor came storming into the room, having returned from trying to track down the bot that had managed to get away from them with the scepter. He stormed over to Tony and grabbed hold of his throat before anyone could make a move to stop him. He squeezed down on Tony's airway as he pushed him back, lifting him into the air slightly. "Thor!" Tessa shouted, surprised by the sudden assault.
"Come on, use your words, Buddy." Tony groaned out, trying not to panic as his feet left the ground.
"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark!" Thor shout out at him.
"Thor!" Tessa said again, flashing over to him and pushing him off of Tony with a strong shove. Tony fell out of his grasp as Tessa took a step in front of him, blocking Thor from reaching out to Tony again. "That's enough of that!" she told him, knowing if anyone was to be blamed, it was her. The two siblings stared down at each other before Steve pulled Thor's attention to him.
"Thor! The Legionnaire." He said, taking his own step forward.
"Trail went cold about a hundred miles out, but it's heading north." Thor responded, bringing his eyes back over to Tessa. "And it had the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it…again." He said, narrowing his eyes down on her. "I find myself disappointed in you sister." He spit out at her.
"Yeah, well there's a lot of that going around." Tessa bit back at him, having felt the judgment radiating off nearly everyone in the room.
"This could have all been avoided had you not been playing around with a force you don't understand. Again." He told her as he loomed over her, taking a dig at a spot he knew she was sensitive about. Suddenly Tony started cracking up from behind her, causing everyone to look over at him like he'd gone insane. "You think this is funny?" Thor asked, looking at him from over Tessa's shoulder in disbelief.
"I'm sorry. It is. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this!" Tony told him, trying to come to Tessa's defense.
"Tony, now's not the time." Tessa said in exasperation, rubbing the side of her temples, not mentally able to handle this feud.
"Really?" Tony asked her with a scoff. "That's it? You just roll over and show your belly because big brother strolls up and says he's disappointed?"
"Only because we managed to create a fucking homicidal robot!" she yelled out at him, her anger with herself and everything else rising.
"We didn't." Tony said, throwing his hands out to the side. "We weren't even close!" he said before turning to Bruce. "Were we close to an interface?" he asked him, which Bruce just shrugged in response to.
"Well, you did something right." Steve told him, his voice coming out harsh. "And you did it right here." He said, stepping towards them. "Tessa, the Avengers were supposed to be different than S.H.I.E.L.D.!" he yelled out at her, voicing his disappointment, too. "I can get why Tony or Bruce would think this was a good idea. But you? You should have known better. What were you thinking?!" he demanded, never before being so upset with her.
"I was scared!" she yelled out, tears burning in her eyes, having found that she was slowly losing control. "Do you know how many times the world had suffered because of me?!" she yelled out, eyes sweeping around the room. "It's always been on me! Everything that goes wrong! Every time someone ends up suffering….it's almost always my fault! I've watched too many people I love be taken because of some stupid mistake I've made!" she told them, bringing her tear-laced eyes back over to Steve. "And all I've ever wanted was to keep the people I love safe….to protect them. And when Loki opened up that portal right above our heads, it made me realize that it's not just one or two bad men out there wanting to take over the world. There's an entire universe of bad out there and there's nothing stopping those forces from coming here and sweeping though our world like a kid kicking over a sandcastle!" she said, drawing in a breath before bringing her eyes over to Thor. "Malekith almost succeeded in destroying this world along with the entire nine realms and we barely stopped him. What happens if next time someone comes along and we're just not enough?" she said sucking in a shaky breath as she tried to level out her breathing. "That, up there…" Tessa said, pointing up into the air. "That's the Endgame….and we may be strong, but we're not invincible. How are we supposed to defeat something that we don't even remotely compare to?" she asked them all, letting out all the fear she had been feeling lately in her words, hoping they would see just why she made the choices she did.
"We handle it the same way we've always handled things, Rose." Steve told her, his voice growing softer, yet still held the edge of disappointment. "Together."
Tessa searched his eyes, knowing he could never understand the thoughts in her mind. "And what if the Avengers aren't enough?" she asked him. "What if we lose?"
"Then we do that together, too." Steve told her solemnly, to which Tessa let out a breath of disbelief to.
"I'm sorry…. I just can't accept that." Tessa told him then before brushing past him, needing some air. "Let's just focus on finding Ultron. He's out there somewhere and we have to find him."
The rest of the night was spent sweeping though every system they could get ahold of, trying to track down the whereabouts of the deranged robot. There had been reports made all around the globe of metal men attacking robotics labs, weapons facilities, jet repulsion labs, and more, leaving them chasing trail after trail. The reports also often mentioned a young girl and something too fast to see. It seemed that the Maximoff twins had shown themselves and chosen to align with their enemy, something that made things that much harder.
Tessa was currently standing over Natasha's shoulder, looking down at the screen as she swept through the maze Ultron was leading them through. Steve walked in with Maria, pulling her vision to him. "I think we've got something." He told everyone, striding into the room. He handed the tablet in his hands over to Thor who looked down at it as Tessa stepped up beside him.
"What's this?" she asked him, trying to get a good look at whatever was on the display. Thor thrust it out at her, shoving it into her gut rather forcefully as he handed it over for her to look at. Tessa let out an annoyed sigh, finding his insistence to be upset with her rather tiresome. Knowing now was not the time to get into another argument, she took the pad into her hands without saying anything more and flipped it around to look down at it's screen.
"Strucker?" she asked, looking down at the image of his corpse with the word peace written on the wall behind him in his blood.
"It's a message from Ultron." Steve told her as the others came around to observe the image for themselves.
"But why?" Tessa asked, blinking up to Steve. "Ultron already made his grandiose speech face-to-face. Why do this?" she asked, holding up the tablet and image on it.
"It's a smoke screen." Natasha surmised.
"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss." Steve said after thinking it through.
"Yeah, I bet he…" Natasha was saying as she went to pull up the file on Strucker, only for it to have been deleted from their database. "The files we had on Strucker are all gone. Everything's been erased." Natasha informed them disappointedly.
Tessa let out a sigh, rubbing her eyes. "Well, I guess we do this the old-fashioned way." She told everyone. "Let's pull out the hard copies from the archives and start digging."
So, they pulled up all the boxes they could find and got to work. They pulled stack after stack out of the boxes, shifting through the contents of the folders, trying to find something that seemed important enough that Ultron would want to keep Strucker's lips tied over it forever.
"Strucker had a lot of friends." Tessa commented as she helped dig through the box of known associates with Tony, Bruce, Thor and Steve, it having taken longer than expected.
"I'm not sure friend is the proper adjective for any of these people….they're all horrible." Bruce responded, shifting though his own set of folders.
"Wait." Tony said, looking down at the folder Bruce had opened in his hands. "I know that guy." He said as Bruce handed him over the file. Tessa looked down over his shoulder, trying to figure out how Tony could have possibility known the man identified within. "From back in the day." He answered, without her having to ask. "He operates off the African coast. Black market arms."
Tessa's face dropped and she brought her eyes up to Tony's, giving him a pointed look. "There are conventions, all right?" he shot over to her, noticing her look of displeasure. "You meet people."
"What conventions?" Tessa scoffed. "The annual 'I'm-A-Terrible-Person-Who-Wants-To-See-The-World-Burn Convention? Is that where you met him?"
"It's not like I sold him anything." Tony defended.
"Oh, that makes me feel so much better." Tessa said with a roll of her eyes. "So, did you happen to pick anything up from him that would be useful?"
"He was talking about finding something new….a game changer." He responded as Tessa lifted out one of the photographs inside to inspect it.
"What's this?" she asked, motioning down at the marking on his neck.
"That would be called a tattoo, Tess." Tony quipped back. "What are you gonna do, C.S.I. it and track him down by finding his tattoo artist?"
Tessa swung he eyes back over to Tony, fighting the urge to smack him against the back of his head as Thor pulled the picture from her hands. "Not the ink job, Captain Obvious." She told him. "I'm talking about the brand burned into his skin. The flesh around it is far too damaged and jagged for that to have been voluntary and I don't recognize the symbol. Do you?" she asked the others.
As no one seemed to be able to identify it, Bruce moved over to the computer behind them and ran a search on it. After a minute, the system found a match. "Oh, yeah." Bruce said, looking over the information on the screen. "It's a word in an African dialect meaning thief." He said, turning back around to face everyone. "Only, in a much less friendly way."
"What dialect?" Steve asked.
"Wakanada." Bruce said, before looking back to the screen, not finding the name familiar.
"Wakanda." Tessa corrected for him, having found the name very familiar. She swung her eyes back over to Tony and she lifted her brow at him, both of them knowing what made Wakanda so special. "If this guy managed to get his hands on some of Wakanda's trade goods…" she began.
"I thought my dad pulled the last of it." Tony said back to her, his eyebrows furrowing down in thought.
"Maybe not. Howard kept a lot of things secret over the years." She told him with a shrug.
"I-I don't follow." Brice said, walking back over to them.
"What comes out of Wakanda?" Steve asked them.
"Well, Steve, you should be thoroughly familiar with it." Tessa told him, bringing her eyes over to him. "Considering your shield's made of it." Steve's brows drew together as him and Bruce put the connection together.
"I'm sorry, I still don't understand." Thor told them, looking around the group, being the only one who hadn't figure it out.
"Howard made Steve's shield out of the strongest metal known to man….vibranium. It's incredibly rare and there's only one place on Earth you can find it. Care to take a guess where?" Tessa asked him with a raised brow.
"So where is this guy now?" Steve asked Tony, deciding this was the best lead they had.
"Well, Cap. If bad guys like him are anything, they're predictable." Tony said.
And it turned out that he was, in fact, predictable. Tony was able to pinpoint Ulysses Klaue down off the African coast and they set out in the quin jet. It was a quiet flight, as no one was really in a jolly enough mood to hold a conversation, and they arrived at their destination within a few hours. They located the cargo ship that the black-market arms dealer was using as a hub, dropped the jet down on the main land, and wasted no time in infiltrating the large vessel.
Bruce stayed back on the ship, Natasha and Clint were in charge of sweeping the perimeter, and Tessa transported herself, Tony, Thor and Steve deep into the belly of the ship. It seemed, however, that Ultron had already beaten them there. When they landed in the open space, they found the robot yelling down at the man they had come all that way for, having severed one of his arms clean off. He was yelling about being compared to Tony, something he seemed rather bothered by.
"Don't compare me to Stark!" Ultron yelled out, having kicked Ulysses down the stairs before him. "Stark is….he's a sickness!" he seethed as Tessa brought them all up to the bridge Ultron and the others were occupying.
"Awe, Junior." Tony said over to him, feigning hurt and drawing Ultron's attention over to them, along with the Maximoff twins who stood behind him. "You're gonna break your old man's heart."
Ultron took notice of them, standing fully upright as he faced them. "If I have to." he said, taking a step towards them all.
"No body has to break anything." Thor said then, hoping to pacify the situation, even though he knew it was a null attempt.
"Clearly you've never made an omelet." Ultron snarked over to him as he came to a stop a few feet before them.
"He beat me by one second." Tony said as he looked back at the others, the quip about to roll of his own tongue before Ultron beat him to it.
Tessa rolled her eyes and took a step forward towards the intimidating machine. "We're not going to let you do this, Ultron." She warned him. "You should stop now before things get ugly."
"Ah, the woman with many names." Ultron said, waving his hand in her direction. "What should I call you? Rose? Tessa? Rania? Or perhaps Mother, seeing as it's your fear which gave birth to my existence."
Tessa's jaw twitched in anger. "I don't give a damn what you call me, so long as you do it from the pits of Hell." She threw back at him.
"Hmm." Ultron said in amusement. "Such bravery from someone so consumed with fear of losing anything else, that she was willing to risk everything else for it. So blinded by your obsession to protect everything around you that you never stopped once to ponder the possibility that the world doesn't need to be protected by you….it needs protection from you. You. Stark. All of you. You're a plague on this Earth." He said, striking a chord in Tessa that set her insides boiling.
Tessa brought her burning eyes over to the young man and woman behind Ultron, choosing to ignore his attempts at riling her up. "I don't know what narrative he's got you both believing, and I don't know what horror has set you down this path, but you don't have to do this." She told them, knowing they were both so incredibly young to be dragged into this mess. "You can still walk away from this."
"Oh, we will." The girl told her with a wicked smile.
"Look, I know you've suffered." She tried again before Ultron cut her off with a scoff.
"Ugh. You act like you care, but we both know the only thing you care about is protecting yourself." He told her smugly. "Even when you claim to be protecting the people you care about, it's only because you're terrified to end up alone. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong."
"This doesn't have to be a fight." Steve said, stepping up beside Tessa as she quietly stared over at Ultron, her fists tightening until her fingernails dug into her flesh.
"Captain America." Ultron said in disdain, looking over to him. "God's Righteous Man….pretending you can't live without a war. I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but.."
"If you believe in peace, then let us keep it." Thor said then, stepping up to Tessa's other side.
"I think you're confusing peace with quiet." Ultron said back to him, taking another threatening step towards them.
"Uh-huh." Tony said, sick of the self-righteous monologue. "What's the vibranium for?" he asked him pointedly.
"I'm glad you asked that." Ultron responded. "Because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan." He said, voice dripping in sarcasm.
Ultron suddenly reached forward and, with a pulse of energy, Tony was suddenly pulled over the space separating them as three more robots dropped down in front of Tessa and the others. Tessa quickly brought up a shield around herself as the robot in front of her sent a blast out without warning, at the same time that Ultron sent his own blast out at Tony, sending him flying back against the wall behind them. The blast directed at Tessa, hit her, and sent her flying back as well before she was able to transport herself out of the air and drop down behind the robot which attacked her. She latched onto it with her powers, wrapping them around its top and lower halves before pulling back her arms with a strong thrust that pulled the robot in half. She sent each half flying across the ship in opposite directions, then spun around as Tony went soaring past her, slamming into Ultron's form.
Tessa watched as Tony and Ultron went flying through the air in a tangled mess before something hit her back, sending her crashing down to the ground. She quickly rolled over to find a blur rushing past her, moving towards Steve and Thor who were engaged in their own fights with the bots. Tessa pushed herself back up and went to latch onto the robot striking out at Steve before something else hit her in the back, and she was sent stumbling again. She spun around just as another red blast was sent her way and she quickly transported herself out of the way, dropping down in front of the Maximoff girl who had sent out the blast of energy.
The girl, Wanda, was staring over at her, her eyes glowing a deep red. Tessa's own powers were flowing through her, causing her own blue eyes to meet the girl's red ones. "I don't think you want to do this." Tessa warned her, not really wanting to hurt the young woman.
"Oh, I really do." Wanda shot back at her, sending out a wave of her power that Tessa blocked with a surge of her own. As the two powers clashed, Tessa dropped herself down behind Wanda. The younger woman spun around, but before she could strike out at Tessa again, Tessa wrapped her powers around her and halted her movements. Wanda struggled against her hold for a moment before a smirk began to lift up her lip. "You want to know what I see when I look into your mind?" she asked Tessa far too happily. "There's so much fear inside you….screaming to be released." She said as a red swirling energy began to emanate from her fingers. "So much….chaos."
Tessa's senses were overtaken and suddenly she was no longer standing in the middle of the ship, but in Asgard, women and men surrounding her in the large open hall, everyone around her dressed in beautiful gowns and the finest of clothes. There was soft music playing throughout the room as Tessa spun around, trying to make sense of her thoughts that had suddenly become a muddled mess of confusion. She looked around, trying to figure out what was happening around her, moving through the crowd in a panic, having no idea how she had gotten there.
"There you are." Came a deep, familiar voice from behind her, causing her to whip around so suddenly the room went spinning around her. She looked up to find a tall, dark-haired man, dressed the same green and gold outfit she had seen him in so many times before. He was smirking down at her, and Tessa's throat had gone dry.
"L-Loki?" she whispered, something in her chest aching at the sight of him.
"Were you expecting someone else?" he asked her with a small laugh that floated around her like a warm hug.
"I…" Tessa said, unable to remember why it was his face brought her so much sadness. "What…." She began, looking around in confusion again. "What's going on?"
"We're celebrating." he told her, stepping forward and wrapping his arm around her waist, pulling her up against him. He began to lead her around the room then, the music around them guiding their movements.
The feeling of Loki's hands around her and the feeling of his breath on her skin left her feeling lightheaded. "Celebrating?" Tessa repeated, finding it hard to think past anything other than the feeling of his touch as he moved them around the room, the crowd parting before them.
"Our rule, of course." He told her then as he spun her around the dance floor. "Asgard has flourished more under our combined forces than ever before." He told her, his voice rolling over her like warm honey. "All of the nine realms tremble at the sound of our names."
"Tremble?" Tessa asked, the thought not sitting right with her. "We're meant to protect the realms, aren't we?" she asked, finding that her mind could not make sense of things, though she knew something was so very wrong.
"It's not the realms that I care about protecting." He told her, his lips brushing against her ear. "We weren't made like everyone else." he said, bringing his face back as he hooked a finger under her chin, lifting it up to face him. "You weren't born to protect them Rania. You were born to rule them." He whispered, his face only inches from her own, his breath washing over her like a cold breeze that sent a shiver down her spine.
"No….I…I have to protect them." She insisted, trying to pull back from him.
"Protect them?" he laughed before spinning her around, bringing her back up against his chest, holding her to him as he pressed his mouth against her ear. "It's too late for that." He said as Tessa's heart dropped when she took in the image before her. There were no longer beautiful women and men dancing around them in the hall. No, Tessa and Loki were now standing in the center of hundreds of bodies, blood covering the golden floor in a pool of red. "Look what you've done, My Queen." Loki said as Tessa took in the faces surrounding them.
Every face Tessa looked at was all too familiar. It wasn't just her friends and family dead at her feet this time, it was every person she had ever crossed paths within her long life, that had impacted her even in the slightest. Everyone she had ever met, spoke with, or had even the simplest of connection, lay motionless around them, filling the large hall in a sea of death. The people she had cared most about were closest to her, empty eyes all staring up at her, their bodies surrounding her in a wall of horror she couldn't seem to escape.
"No!" Tessa sobbed, her heart rate suddenly going erratic as her eyes frantically bounced around from person to person, each one sending her deeper into despair. "This isn't…I don't want this!" she cried out, pulling herself out of Loki's grip and spinning around to face him. "Please make it stop!" she pleaded, her voice nearing hysterics.
"I can't." he told her, his smile having disappeared now. His gaze dropped down to his chest and Tessa's eyes followed to find it covered in a growing patch of blood. Tessa's eyes went wide as she realized he was going to die, just like all the others. Her eyes snapped back up to his as her breathing came out ragged and uneven. "He's coming to kill us all." Loki said then, his voice echoing around them, the words repeating in an endless succession. "He's coming."
Suddenly Tessa felt the ground under her give way, and she began falling. She let out a scream as she tried to cling to the crumbling floor around her, trying to latch onto something to stop her fall, but there was nothing to grab. She fell as Loki watched from above. She screamed out his name, reaching out desperately for him, but she dropped down helplessly until Loki disappeared and she was left swimming in an endless pit of nothing but the endless darkness.