Ultron grunted slightly, as he looked up to the stars. It was boring and even the bright spangled sky was boring when you knew… well all the stuff you could know about it. This was very hard to admit, but knowing too much made things just plain and boring. Distant suns, glowing in the night, probably dead by now, because their light would travel- Boring. Well making this vessel grunt was an achievement. That was something. He could work on unuseful and disturbing sounds. For the hang of it. Nothing else. Damn, he needed something to do. Ultron got up again and stared at the dark headquarter. What good was an artificial intelligence when its mind had nothing to figure out? Nothing to do and nothing- A light went on.
"Oh." Since he wasn't exactly the badly paid nightguard of the Avengers, he shouldn't exactly care what was going on in there. But he was the not even paid being, that was kind of stuck in this place and really needed some entertainment. That settled it for him. Ultron opened the doors carefully and snug in. His footsteps were not easy to silence. The heavy body made it hard to stay silent on the marble floor. Why couldn't they just use bacteria infested carpet? He already knew the building pretty well. Knew the dark corners, checked the blueprints for windows and stairs. The light appeared to be on the second floor. There was not much up there, since the real hive was deep in the ground. That big place he wasn't allowed to enter. With all the interesting and deadly things. Carefully he got upstairs, ducking slightly so whoever was there wouldn't spot him right away. To his fortune every step had three thin lines of rubber on it. That made the whole task almost achievable. He never even noticed before.
When his red glowing eyes reached the point where he could look down the hallway, it was just empty. Nothing. Ultron dimmed their light. But it was here. No doubt. Also it was a little too soon for regression of his mind due to underuse of its capacity. Blackouts would be the first sign of that. Just when he started to think about other symptoms, he heard a noise, coming from the elevators. So he wasn't alone after all. One strip light was illuminating the hallway, all the others were turned off. "Why isn't this machine reacting to-", a voice huffed annoyed. Followed by the sound of randomly pushed buttons and more silent grumble. From his dark corner Ultron was able to spot a very busy looking little man in greyish-green uniform. He seemed of advanced age, regarding his thinning hair and the slumped shoulders. On his belt was a flashlight, but no weapon. So it was a nightguard? The robot vessel almost gave another disappointed sigh, but he stopped it in time. At least that was what he thought. "Someone there!?", the human suddenly asked, turning around and scanning the area. Ultron was really tempted to answer this with a high-pitched `no´. But he decided to have some more fun with this.
He made his body stand up straight and backed up to the wall, motionless. "I can see you there! You-" When the flashlights ray reflected on the silver frame in the corner, the guard fell silent for a few seconds. "Hello?", he asked carefully. No answer, so he came a little closer. Ultron was able to see his face now, from the green eyes, up to the small nametag on his uniform. `Greg Masters´. Well he didn't know any Greg Masters. If he still had access to the internet, he could have googled him or something. The man stopped right in front of him. "No one in there?" Again, he was tempted. It was pretty obvious that there was no one inside this armor. In contrary to Iron Mans suits, his body was thinner, more graceful and- There was just no space to fit any normal sized humans inside. And still the man put a hand on his chest. Something was off, he just couldn't say what it was at the moment. Suddenly the concentrated look on his face vanished and a little smile appeared.
"Just some statue." Oh hell no. "I had this feeling that… You scared me there for a second, my metal friend." Also no. The nightguard studied the tie with a confused grin, shook his head and went back to the elevator controls. One last time he tried to open its doors, before he gave up. Some actually kind of unfamiliar curse word was heard. Then he just stood there for a while, looking out of the window. "Next time then." What was he even trying to accomplish here? The hive hardly needed any guarding. Even those two levels had enough cameras to spot every single pest or bug trying to enter the building. As far as he knew the hangar even had heat signal and motions sensor nets all over the place. The man sighed again and went back to the stairs. Seemed like his work here was done and it wasn't even 4 o'clock. A weird shift. Ultron slowly followed him and stared down to the main doors to watch him leave. He never saw him left.
"Aaaaaand just a little more. Yes! Just like this!"
"This is ridiculous and you know it."
"And you still do it, Ulti."
That was a good point. Toni took his freshly made and totally for-free coffee out of the machine and sat down at the nearest table, where Ultrons vessel was already seated. "I have to keep you busy after all, don't I?" Giving him full access to network and databases would be a nice start. The robot body crossed his legs under the table and leant back in the chair. "You couldn't fill my capacities even if you tried.", he claimed with a grunt. He really got that sound nailed down by now.
Toni just sipped his coffee, grinning to himself. "I got something for you. Worked on it last night." "Is it another Bluetooth-stick? So I can make you hot beverages and give you free food at the same time?" Behind the human he spotted some female, trying to operate the machine he was still linked to. "No. Yes. Well yeah. But not like this. I got you something else. Because I realized that giving you nothing to do, wouldn't do us any good. You will just get bored and do something stupid." Toni pointed at him, with the mug still on his lips. Ultron put a hand on his chest and showed him his best appalled expression. "Me? What makes you say that?" In the background the womans clothes were soaked in semi-hot cacao.
He didn't even have to turn around. "That was not necessary." "Her pantsuit was white." Now he turned around. But just for a second. Iron Man raised his finger again and opened his mouth, just to shut it again and overthink what he was about to say. "I won't mention it to Fury, I you don't.", he offered. Ultron put his arms on the table and watched all the helpful males coming to her rescue. With napkins. Trying to stop the machine form spitting out more cacao. "I´m running out of water." "Would you stop that! It's enough." It was fun though. And he couldn't help but notice the slight hint of a smile on Tonis face. "I didn't kill anyone. Relax." He would need a lot more water to accomplish that. "And I really hope you won't start doing that. Natasha suggested giving you treats, when you did something good and useful." Ultron tilted his head. "Is she mistaking me for some mutt?" "Let´s say it´s a different point of view.", Toni told him with a shrug. Behind him a janitor with a mop started cleaning off the mess.
"But back to the reason I asked you to join me for breakfast." "And I thought you just enjoyed my company." Or the free snacks. It was a little hard to admit. He didn't even hesitate when Toni send him a message. Sure, it was just this stick-nonsense again. But it was something. Talking to himself was one thing. Like that he was always right, nobody talked back and no stupid questions were asked. But to study someone else's reactions was more interesting. Human beings acted to different. So unpredictable, so… illogical. Sometimes beyond his imagination. He didn't like Anthony Stark. This was all his fault. On the other hand `hate´ was not the right word either. Not any more? Ultron made a disgusted face. No. Was he actually growing a liking there? No way. He never really did that before and it would be ridiculous. Illogical…
"What´s with the weird face?", Toni asked him and furrowed his brow. "What crawled into your processor and died?" He reached into a bag next to the table and pulled out a white laptop. Ultron looked at it with interest. "What now?", he asked, trying to get a better view. "Now?" It was almost lovely to see the nasty robot guy attentive like this. "Now I´m gonna show you something." Toni got up, moved his chair a little closer and turned the screen around, so they could both see. Nobody in the cafeteria really cared about what they were doing. Officially this was not Ultron. This was just some drone he created for his Iron Legion. A test. Nothing else. And the agents in the Headquarters had surely seen weirder stuff. Ultron did not understand what this was supposed to be. He stared at the screen, checking out the little symbols on the desktop. Just when he couldn't take it any more and wanted to ask, Toni put another stick on the table and shoved it over.
"Are you serious?" "Don't get too excited." So he was serious? Was this a trick? Then again he couldn't get any more trapped than he already was and a computer was at least in some ways better than a robot body. He´d still like to keep both. Ultron carefully picked up the stick and turned it in his hand. It looked genuine. When Toni didn't say anything anymore, he just plugged it in and waited. "Oh." "What is it?", Stark asked a little confused. "I´m just looking for the catch." "Well there is no catch. Just hop in." There was no need to tell him another time. "There goes nothing.", Ultron muttered and reached out to the stick. The moment he entered the laptops mainframe all his precautions were forgotten. He stretched out into every small folder, every piece of code and searched through all the personal data. It wasn´t much and sadly there was no way to access any kind of internet connection. But this was a computer. He was in a computer.
Toni rather watched the smiling robot next to him, than the switching screen and the opening folders. That was far more interesting. When he was done memorizing that, he leaned over the keyboard. "Give me access to the controls, will you?" Ultron turned his head and looked at Toni. He wanted the controls back already? But he didn't take out the stick. Maybe he could give him the keyboard, that should be enough, make some space for the human. Another thing he never did before. When Toni entered the first words, a smirk spread over his lips. So Ultron did comply. "You saw the MarkX folder?", he guided him to the next step, trying to keep up with the artificial intelligence. "Yes.", the robot nodded. "But I don't understand. Why would you design a suit that has mechanical features instead of automatic ones?" Ultron made a turn in controls and threw Toni of course. He heard him curse silently, trying to get back to the point where he was. This was nice. This was even fun. "I wrote a new program.", Toni explained further, never shifting his focus.
"I saw it. I don't see how that is useful to you. I just takes over some functions and is linked to communications and scanning devices and-" Ultron twitched surprised when this human was able to predict his next move and get ahead of him for just a second. They made it faster through that program. "Exactly. It can perform tasks and commands faster than I could think and analyze them. The mechanical features are a manual emergency stop to shut it down immediately." He still didn't get it. When it was faster than him and could operate at a speed surpassing the human brain, how would he- Ultron stopped and Toni finished the coding alone. "You are crazy." "Yeah. That's a possibility." "Why do you think I would help you with that?", the robot vessel asked almost insulted and came closer. "Easy question. You have nothing else to do. So you have two options in this: Don't cooperate and sit on your metal ass all day. Or link into my suit, be a good boy and see what we can do together."
Toni gave him a weird look. "I was awesome with Jarvis. But with Ultron." Ultron huffed. "You would be perfect.", he argued, crossing his arms again. And this wasn't even arrogance. It was the truth. "I´ll give you some time to think about it. You can have the laptop.", Toni offered, taking the hands off the keyboard and handing it over again. "I installed Call of duty." "What?" "You might enjoy that one…" And if he didn't, he also installed Sims. Where he could drown poor Steve-looking guys in the pool. Or keep some bearded chap with a red suit looked up in the basement. One way or another, Toni couldn't imagine him just playing the game in a nice way. "Think about it. I will ask you again tomorrow and we could go for a test drive in the training hall. And don't tell anyone. They would institutionalize me." "That might be the best option. But I must admit that the whole idea sounds more interesting than stalking the weird nightguard." That was really not his finest hour.
Toni blinked. "What nightguard?"
So apparently there was no nightguard. When they checked the cameras on the second floor there was some kind of weird interference. None of them caught him on tape and Ultron was the only one even noticing him. If it wasn't for the failure in Starks infallible security systems, they wouldn't even believe him. Not even the front cameras had any footage of him leaving the building. It was just odd. Ultron made the blond guy with the blue and white sweater pick up the morning paper and bring it into the smartly engineered home he build for his little slaves. These human-like creatures really did everything he told them.
This night he would keep an eye out for Mr. Masters. But he doubted he would just appear out of thin air again. This time he would…. Well do something. Throw himself onto him and wait until someone arrived and take him in for questioning. With Tonis new program he would have more power though. More might. More space to stretch out. He didn't even deny it any more. There were some virus-like features in his personality. With a dark chuckle he made the blond guy make out with a bearded one in the red suit. This was fun indeed.