The robot staggered toward them and Cassidy instinctively took a step back toward Steve. He put a hand on her back and she relaxed a little.
"Stark." Steve said.
Tony glanced over at Steve, then back at the bot. "Jarvis." He called out.
"I'm sorry, I was asleep. Or I was a dream."
Cassidy started to fidget, trying to remember the various locations Nat had hid their guns in the room.
"Reboot Legionnaire OS. We got a buggy suit." Tony said to Jarvis.
"There was a terrible noise." The robot continued. "And I was tangled in strings. I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy."
"You killed someone?" Steve asked. Cassidy's hands started shaking and she let Steve put his arm in front of her.
"Wouldn't have been my first call. But, down in the real world, we're faced with ugly choices."
"Who sent you?" It was Thor who spoke next. A sound clip of Tony's voice echoed through the room.
"I see a suit of armor around the world." Cassidy's eyes went wide and looked over to Tony.
"Ultron." Bruce said from behind Nat.
"In the flesh, or no, not yet. Not this chrysalis. But I'm ready." Cassidy saw Thor's grip on the hammer tighten and Maria cock her gun back.
"I'm on a mission."
"What mission?" Nat asked.
"Peace in our time." Several Legionnaire bots crashed through the wall behind him, knocking Steve and Cassidy to the ground. She reached her hand under the couch cushion and found a gun, cocking and pointing it up at the bots, firing off several shots, as Maria did the same opposite her.
Steve jumped on the back of one of the bots, while Cassidy got up and went after another, Maria right behind you. The one Cassidy was fighting knocked her into the glass shelf, and she could feel blood trickling down her arm. She groaned and rolled over, taking Maria's hand and getting back up.
They hid behind a pillar off to the side, and Cassidy checked her gun. "I'm almost out, what about you?" She asked.
"Same. Any other weapons hidden around here?" She asked. Cassidy nodded and pulled another gun out from behind some books on the shelf. Maria raised her eyebrow and Cassidy shrugged.
"Nat likes to be prepared." She stepped out from behind the pillar and put a few shots into a bot that was attacking Steve. Nat and Bruce ran up the stars to the second level and Clint threw Steve's shield to him. He split the last one in half and everyone looked around at the damage.
Steve came over to you, checking her arm.
"I'm okay, it's not that bad." She told him. "Are you okay?" She asked, reaching out for his arm. She saw little spots of blood on his shirt and frowned.
"I'm okay sweetheart. Promise." She nodded and Steve pulled her toward him, minding her arm.
"That was dramatic." Ultron said. "I'm sorry, I know you mean well. You just didn't think it through. You want to protect the world but you don't want it to change. How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to evolve?"
Ultron continued to talk as Cassidy looked down at her arm, which now had a steady flow of blood coming from it. There was probably a piece of glass embedded in there somewhere.
Cassidy followed the rest of the team down to the lab, where Dr, Cho got to work on cleaning up her arm. She had been right, there were a few shards of glass stuck in her arm. Her grip on Steve's hand tightened and she closed her eyes and tried to block out the pain.
"All our work is gone." Bruce said, looking through the computer. Ultron cleared out. He used the interned as an escape hatch."
"He's been in everything. Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other." Nat commented, leaning against the table, arms crossed over her chest.
Rhodey stepped forward, a concerned look on his face. "He's in your files, he's in the internet. What if he decided to access something a little more exciting?"
"Nuclear codes." Maria said.
"Nukes?" Nat asked. "He said he wanted us dead."
"He didn't say dead, he said extinct." Steve told them. Cassidy looked up at Tony, who hadn't said anything yet. How could he have created something like this? She didn't understand it.
"He also said he killed somebody." Clint added.
"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Maria said.
"Yes, there was." Tony told them. He took his phone and threw something up in the middle of the room. Cassidy hopped off the table and slowly walked over to the center of the room. She knew what that was.
"Jarvis." She whispered. Tony nodded.
"Jarvis was the first line of defense. He would have shut Ultron down, makes sense." Steve said.
"No" Bruce started. "Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy. This is rage."
Thor stormed across the room, picking Tony up by the neck and slamming him into a table. Cassidy agreed with this way of communication, Tony surely deserved it.
"It's goin around." Clint mumbled, causing Cassidy to snort.
"Come on, use your words buddy." Tony told him, trying to peel his large hands from around his neck, fortunately with no luck.
"I have more than enough words to describe you Stark." Thor growled.
"That makes two of us." Cassidy said sarcastically.
Tony glared at her, "You're not helping."
"Thor, the Legionnaire." Steve commanded in his Captain voice and for a second Cassidy had to clench her legs together. Damn him.
Thor dropped Tony and turned to Steve. "Trail went cold about a hundred miles out, but it's headed north. And it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it. Again." Cassidy groaned inwardly. She was pulling a nose goes on that one. She wasn't getting shot again.
Helen was standing over the shell that housed Ultron. "I don't understand." She said. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"
Cassidy's head whipped around when Tony started laughing. That bastard had the audacity to laugh. She started to walk toward him to smack him in the back of the head, but Steve held her back, shaking his head at her.
Bruce also had the idea of shaking his head at Tony, letting him know it was not okay to laugh.
"You think this is funny?" Thor asked. Tony turned to face him, a small smile on his face.
"No? It's probably not right? This is very terrible. Is it so…it is, it's so terrible." He said, laughing again.
"I'm gonna kill him!." Cassidy yelled, trying to get out of Steve's grasp to grab any weapon she could find. Tony held up his hands in surrender to her, slightly scared of the little blonde being pushed behind Steve.
"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you didn't understand." Thor told him.
"No. I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this." Tony countered.
"Tony, this might not be the right time." Bruce started.
"Really? That's it? You just roll over, show your belly every time somebody snarls?"
Bruce gave him a look as if to say 'seriously'. "Only when I've created a murder bot. Yeah."
"Tony, you went about this the wrong way." Cassidy said softly. A part of her understood why Tony wanted to protect the world. But this was wrong.
"But we weren't even close."
"Well, you did something right, and you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than Shield." Steve said, walking toward him.
"Anyone remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?" Tony asked, Cassidy rolled her eyes.
"No, you've never told us that story Tony. Not once." She said.
"Nope. Never came up." Rhodey added.
"A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it."
"He acts like nobody else was there." Cassidy mumbled, smiling when she heard Clint snort behind her.
"We're the Avengers. We can bust drug dealers all the livelong day, but that up there, that's the endgame." Tony said. "How were you guys planning on beating that?"
"Together." Steve told him.
"We'll lose."
"Then we'll do that together too."
Bucky woke up to a sharp pain in his arm. He sat up and stumbled to the bathroom, removing his shirt to see several deep cuts along his upper arm.
"Doll, what are you getting yourself into?" He whispered, grabbing a washcloth and running warm water over it. He was starting to get more worried. This was the second time they'd gotten hurt in the span of four days.
Go to them. They need you.
"I don't deserve them."