Ultron:
The party ended and the Avengers along with Jesse, Rhodey and Maria sat together with cups and drinks around a large table where Mjolnir lay on is heat.
"But it's a trick," Clint claimed, spinning a drumstick between his fingers.
"Oh no it is much more than that," Thora said.
Clint made an impression of Thora's father. He bellowed out softly, "Ah, whoever be he worthy shall have the power,"
Everyone burst out into peals of merriment.
"You make a good impression of my father," Thora complimented.
"Come on! It's a trick" Rhodey protested.
"Please, be my guest," Thora offered. "Give it a shot,"
"Come on," Tony encouraged.
"Really?" Clint asked surprised. "Okay," he stood up.
"Oh this is going to be beautiful," Rhodey complimented.
"Clint, you have a tough week," Tony reminded casually. "We won't hold it against you if you can't get it up,"
Clint looked at Thora. "You know I've seen this before right?"
Thora just smiled and gestured to her hammer.
Clint grabbed the hammer and grunted as he tried to pull it up, but it wouldn't move. "I still don't know how you do it," he chuckled out.
"Smell the silent judgement?" Tony joked.
Una across from him frowned a little.
"Please by all means," Clint offered to Stark.
Tony stood up. "Nothing one to shrink from an honest challenge," she said with a smug. "It's physics,"
"Get after it," Rhodes urged.
"So, if I lift it up do I then rule Asgard?" Tony asked Thora.
"Yes," Thora answered. "Of course,"
"I will be reinstituting prima nocta,"
"You become King of Asgard and I'm goanna have to kill you," Una threatened.
"Woah," everyone gasped out.
"Way too harsh," Banner said, a little stuttered by her threat.
Una smirked, not held back by Banner's comment.
Tony gripped the hammer. He heaved with all his might, but it wouldn't budge. Una smirked.
"Be right back," In a minute Tony arrived back with his Iron Suit gauntlet.
"That's cheating," Una criticised. "Doesn't count if you can lift it," but much to her delight, the iron gauntlet with its whirling engines wouldn't lift up Mjolnir.
Rhodey next assisted using his own iron gauntlet. But their combined efforts wouldn't make the hammer budge. "Are you even pulling?" Rhodey grunted.
"Are you on my team?" Stark challenged.
"Just represent. Let's go,"
They grunted and tried again but the hammer won. Eventually they gave up and let Banner have a go. He pulled up with both hands and growled as he failed. He let go before he could let his anger take over and make him transform.
"Your turn Steve," Jesse gestured him up. Steve stood up and pulled his blue sleeves. He gripped the handle with both sides and.
"Come on Cap," Clint motivated him.
"Show that Stark what you got," Una implored.
Everyone looked at her.
"What?" she innocently questioned out. "Just saying that Cap might have a chance,"
Steve rolled up his blue sleeves and tightly gripped Mjolnir's hammer with both his hands. He heaved with all his superhuman might. There was a loud squeak of the table moving.
Thora's face turned straight. How had he done that? Had the table moved because the hammer was budged a bit?
Steve heaved again but the hammer didn't come up.
Thora chuckled as her throat throbbed. "Nothing," she giggled out taking another sip.
"Your turn Widow," Una said next.
"Oh, no, no. That's not a question I need answered," Widow refused as she took a sip of her drink. "You have a go,"
"Yeah! Come on! Let's if the other Asgardian princess can do," Tony cheered in a sort of playful mocking voice.
Una glared darkly at her, but it took a straight face from Steve to calm her down. "You go Jesse," she passed the turn onto Jesse.
"Oh no," Jesse refused. "I definitely can't do it,"
"Come on!" Clint refused to let him refuse the challenge. "You're the lover-boy,"
"Tried lifting it up, loads of time before. Never worked," Jesse shook his head. slapping his hands on his knees.
"All deference to the Women Who Wouldn't Be Queen, but it's rigged," Rhodey said out to everyone.
"You bet your ass," Clint said.
"Steve, you said a bad language word," Maria reminded him, pointing over to him.
Steve glared at Tony. "Did you tell everyone about that?" he questioned.
But Tony didn't answer him. Instead he questioned Thora. "The handled imprinted right? Like a security code. 'Whosoever is carrying Thor's fingerprints' is I think, the literal translation,"
"Don't be daft," Una retorted, looking at Tony like he wasn't seeing the obvious aspect of this ancient hammer. "Asgardian weapons like Mjolnir do not work like that,"
"It's a very interesting theory though. But this theory is simpler," she picked up her hammer and spun it in in the air and caught it again like a drumstick. "You're all not worthy,"
Everybody except Una and Jesse groaned.
"Come on!" Tony complained.
Suddenly a high-pitched noise echoed around the room, making everyone cringe as they felt their eardrums burn. After that they heard slow but loud clanking noises, rising louder as it approached closer. They turned and saw a Stark robot, highly damaged and with wires hanging out of its arms and head, stalk to them in a slow clumsy manner.
"What is that?" Jesse whispered to Thora.
"I hope that's not what I think it is," Thora felt a knot of fear tying itself in her stomach. If this was Tony and Bruce's project gone haywire, then she was going to blow up with fury.
"Worthy. No, how could you be worthy?" the robot wobbled as it turned its attention to the Avengers and their friends. "You're all killers," it waved its arm over everyone.
"Stark." Steve addressed to Tony, not taking his eyes off the robot.
"J.A.R.V.I.S." Tony called on his phone to his program but nothing happened.
"I'm sorry, I was asleep. Or... I was a dream?" the robot sounded dreary as it twist his head from side to side.
"Reboot. Legionnaire 06's got a buggy suit." Tony pressed his see-through phone's screen but again nothing happened.
"There was this... terrible noise... and I was tangled in... in... strings," the robot stumbled back at bit as it looked at all its wires hanging out of its body and its damaged metal parts. "Had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy."
"You killed someone?" Steve questioned.
Una turned cold. "Who did you kill?"
"Wouldn't've been my first call. But, down in the real world, we're faced with ugly choices." the robot spoke again.
"Who sent you?" Thora demanded.
Instead of answering the robot sent out a prerecording of Stark's voice. "I see a suit of armour around the world,"
Una and Thora looked at Stark with hard expressions. What had he done?
"Ultron," Bruce breathed out, truing to Tony. This was their new program; what was happening to it? This wasn't supposed to happen.
"In the flesh," Ultron answered back in its normal voice. "No. Not yet. Not this chrysalis," he bent down in a clumsy manner and gestured to his current form. But I'm ready,"
Thora kept a firm grip on her hammer. Una reached behind her back for her dagger hidden in her dress belt. She saw Maria click her gun just hidden behind her legs and swiftly stand up.
"I'm ready. I'm on mission,"
"What mission?" Romanoff questioned.
"Peace in our time,"
Suddenly Stark's robots burst through the walls. Everyone jumped to the side whilst Cap kicked the table upside to block them, but he blasted down to the floor below.
Maria fired her gun at the robots as she fell on her back. Banner and Nat clambered over the nearby bar table and hid behind it. Una tired leaping on the robots and stabbing their cores with her knife but she was grabbed by one and thrown to the side into a wall.
Thora struck a robot with a blow being pushing Jesse along with Doctor Cho behind a piano to protect them. Rhodey and Tony leaped over the nearby metal banister and slide down the glass windows to the level below.
Hawkeye tried jumping on the robots too, but they were thrown back against glass and stone.
Rhodey was thrown by a robot through a glass panel to the land platform of the Quinjet below.
Tony grabbed a fork and leapt on one of his robots, hooking his arm around the neck and attempting to stab his weapon into its wire neck. But the robot kept floating around in his circles making his attempts slip.
Hawkeye scrabbled behind some shelves looking for Steve's shield before dashing back to the conflict.
Jesse and Cho stayed behind the piano, Jesse watching in fear as he saw his girlfriend take on the robots when suddenly one robot was in front of them. It raised his palm, already burning up to blast them, but the moment it eyed Cho, it hesitated.
The Captain suddenly grabbed the robot. "Thora!" he shouted. He threw the robot towards Thora and she crushed it apart with the swing of her hammer.
Una stabbed her dagger into a fourth robot, and she fell the floor, scrapping her arm against broken glass.
Black Widow struggled to take one robot out as it kept firing at her.
"Captain!" Clint yelled and he threw Steve's shield like a frisbee to its owner. Steve used it to bash and smash the remaining robot, all but one who Thora saw escape with the sceptre.
"I'm sorry, I know you mean well," Ultron started again. "You just didn't think it through,"
The Avengers eyed him with tense, readying their weapons or their fists again if he attempted to attack.
"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? With these?," Ultron picked up a busted Iron Suit robot. "These puppets," he squeezed the head so tight that the mask pinged off. He tossed it aside like useless waste. "There's only one path to peace. The Avengers' extinction."
Thora had had enough. She threw the hammer and the robot smashed to pieces. She summoned it back. Everyone stepped closely to the supposedly dead robot.
"I had strings but now I'm free," the voice faded as the core turned off. Ultron was gone. Not dead. But dissolved away to another form.
Everyone gathered in the lab. Thora and Una were dressed in their suits, desperate to get out as soon as possible.
"All our work is gone. Ultron cleared it out," Banner was flabbergasted with what they had unintentionally created. "He used the Internet as an escape hatch,"
"And he took the sceptre," Una added in, giving everyone the cold shoulder as she was wiping her arm clean with a wet cloth.
"Ultron," Steve said thoughtfully, turning his back on everyone as well. .
"He's been in everything. Fires, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other," Nat told everyone as she crossed her arms.
"Of course he would do that," Una pointed out. She turned back to face everyone. "Of course he would want to know everything about his targets like their weaknesses and their own families,"
"He's your files? He's in the Internet?" Rhodey questioned. "What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?
Maria was busy tending to her bleeding feet. "Nuclear codes," she spoke out loud.
"Nuclear codes," Rhodey sounded serious. "Look we need to make some calls, assuming you still can,"
"Nukes?" Romanoff's repeated. "He said he wanted us dead,"
"He didn't say 'dead,'," Steve turned back to face everyone. "He said 'extinct'" he reminded everyone.
"He also said he killed somebody," Clint recalled, standing up.
"But there wasn't anyone one else in the building," Maria told everyone.
"Yes, there was," Tony turned on Jarvis. He was broken, damaged, destroyed.
Everyone looked at it, shocked or scared expressions forming on their faces. Thora tightly gripped Jesse's hand.
"Is that…?" Jesse drifted off.
"JARVIS," Tony answered. "All torn apart,"
Banner was shocked with what they were seeing. "What?" he respired out. "This is, insane," he felt like he couldn't breathe and that he was about to faint.
"Jarvis was the first line of defence," Steve told everyone. Everyone stared at it with shock. This new threat was becoming more concerning by the second.
Tony didn't cry but his face looked hurt from losing his precious program.
"He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense,"
"No. Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis,'" Banner was already beginning to see that this program was unlike any other that he had ever seen. "This isn't strategy. This is…" he didn't know what to say.
"Rage," Una darkly finished for him.
Before Stark could say another word, Thora suddenly marched up to him and grabbed his neck lifting him up. Everyone except Una started imploring her to put Tony down; she was going too far.
"Come on use your words Missy," Tony grunted under her massive strength.
"Oh, I have more than enough words to tell you Stark," Thora's face was filled with fire.
"Thora!" Steve attempted to calm her down. "Put him down and calm down,"
Thora growled and dropped Tony down. It took her boyfriend a firm rub on the back to calm her nerves before she could have the boldness to kill Stark. "The train went cold about 100 miles out, but it's headed north. And he has the sceptre," Thora cursed.
Everyone was irritated by the news.
"Now we have to retrieve it. Again,"
"We never should have let you two tamper with the sceptre in the first place," Una stared furiously at Banner and Stark. "Your own program has gone haywire, and it's out to destroy us for good,"
"I never should have gone against my better judgement," Thora cursed herself, feeling partly guilty. "It's my fault too because I should have let Una take it back to Asgard when I had the chance," she casted a guilty glance at her cousin and Una saw how regretful she was.
"The genie's out of the bottle," Nat waved them off. "The clear and present threat is Ultron," she was basically saying that they had to focus on stopping Ultron rather than give the lecture on each other about guilt.
"I don't understand," Jesse eyed Tony's destroyed robots edgily. "You built this program Tony," Jesse twisted his face and looked at Tony darkly. "Why is it trying to kill us?" Even his father could have built something so much safer than Stark had.
Tony was silent for a second. Then he started chuckling as he faced a screen board. Nobody was amused. They eyed with both surprise and testiness.
"You think this is funny?" Una's question silenced Tony. "You think the fact that a program you created is trying to kill us is a joke?" she was stomping up at him. A black look piercing Tony's vision.
"No. It's probably not right,"
Everyone crossed their arms and eyebrows, irritated by how he saw this conflict as a joke.
"This is very terrible. Is it so…" he laughed out again. "Is it so… It is. It's so terrible,"
"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand!" Thora shouted at him, pointing an accusing finger at him.
"Hey come on! You're the one who let me use the sceptre!" Tony pointed at her, acting as if it was entirely her fault.
"Watch it Stark," Jesse warned. Nobody blames my girl like that.
"No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny," Tony's voice was calm, and he sounded like everything was alright, much to the chagrin of the girls. "It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this,"
Una growled and grabbed his collar. Everyone flinched as she rammed him into a wall and pulled out his dagger and poked it in his throat.
"Una! Don't do this!" Steve ordered. "It's not goanna achieve anything,"
"I would listen to her if I were you," Tony warned, trying not to show fear from her threats.
"Or what Stark? You're send a robot at me when you're dead?" Una goaded.
"Una, this is the not the time!" Steve raved at her.
"Just put him down!" Bruce bawled at her too.
Una stared coldly into Tony's eyes and saw them fidget. Begrudgingly she let him go, and she stalked out of the lab. Thora tried to talk to her, but she ignored her. She sighed feeling as if Una blamed her. Jesse consoled her with a rub on the back.
Tony took a moment to breath and adjust his collar. "That is the last time I work with that warrior,"
"Tony, maybe this might not be the time," Banner implored because they had bigger problems that a rivalry.
"Really? That's it?" Tony turned angry as he looked and stared at Banner. "You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls. Are you saying I should be concerned about that crazy warrior?"
"Only when I've created a murder bot. And when you've created your own enemy in our own team," Bruce deadpanned with shock. Unlike Stark, he felt deeply guilty for what they had just done. And he was becoming more and more nervous with Una's temper at Stark. It was only a matter of time before she might aim her temper at him because he worked with Stark and she had trusted him more.
Tony huffed and rolled his eyes. "We didn't. We weren't even close to completing Ultron. Were we close to an interface?"
"Well, you did something right," Steve interjected. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than S.H.I.E.L.D," he pointed out.
"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole," Tony refereed back to the Battle of New York.
"No, it's never come up," Rhodey answered.
"Saved New York?" he gloated out.
"Never heard that?" Rhodey continued to shrug off Tony's reminders.
"Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging in through a hole in space. We're standing 300 feet below it. We're the Avengers We can bust arms-deals all the livelong day, but that up there, that's…that's the endgame. How were you guys planning on beating that?" Tony wanted to act like making that program was a good idea and that it was not entirely his fault. But nobody was appeased.
"Together," Steve answered, not losing his focus on Stark.
Tony did not like the answer. He approached Steve carefully. "We'll lose,"
"Then we'll do that together too," Steve declared. Being a team meant fighting beside your teammates until the last breath. "Thora's right. Ultron is calling for us. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place Let's start making it smaller,"
The others agreed. They had to find Ultron. And soon, before he could make his next move.
Tony turned away from everyone, attempting to hide his guilt.