A/N: Woah, long wait. Sorry guys! There's a novel in my brain that I really REALLY want to write, so I tried to buckle down and just do it. However, I have discovered that winter just isn't a good time of year to jump into early morning writing sessions... So, seeing as that is flopping, I figured I should do a little something with this to keep the writing muscles warm.
Though I will admit, as AOU grows fainter and fainter in my memory, keeping with continuity and character will be harder. When I do get my hands on the movie I will definitely be going through and polishing everything up!
One lucky thing for you guys, though, is that I've learned a lot about writing in the last month. So sorry not sorry, I'm going to use this to practice turning up the conflict (=u=)b Be warned!
Extra long to make up for the wait!
The first thing I noticed about my family's return was their attire. Same old coveralls, boots, gloves... balaclavas that they were in the process of pulling off their heads... And as my spirits took a nosedive I reluctantly dragged my attention to the large black duffel bag they were struggling to lug into the shop, though their demeanor was too jovial even by their standards. Steam virtually billowing from my ears, I blocked them from coming any further, hands on my hips, lips pursed. My throat constricted with outrage and apprehension, but I managed to force out the question no naughty child wants to hear from their mother: "And what do you think you're doing?" Yes, I have to parent my father and brother. No, I do not enjoy the concept, but I was getting damn good at it by now. They looked like they could crap their pants when they realized I was getting riled up for another severe lecture.
"Fetching something for me, obviously," Ultron provided when they couldn't speak through their obvious terror. He had clearly gotten over that little emotional outburst from a moment ago and was acting like nothing had happened.
"I know that, Metal Head," I ground out, "I first assumed it would be something like more oil, or at worst a couple more scavenged Ultron corpses. This," I pointed harshly at them, "is 'obviously' a little more than a grocery run. So I'll ask again: what the hell have you done?"
My Pa was beginning to grow red in the face as his own temper was stirring, but Aleks distracted the both of us from another row by unzipping the bag and pouring its contents onto the concrete floor with a resounding clatter. It was a sea of metal. Burnt, twisted, blackened, it looked no different from the scrap metal they already had in heaps around the shop. Confusion was mixing with my anger, which was really mostly worry, and I could also had been premenstrual. I don't know. This was all just as confusing for me. In the end I had to ask. "More metal? Why was that so important?"
Ultron gave that cheesy chuckle that one gives when they were hoping you'd ask that. "Now, really, Katja, would I have these nice fellows break into a military facility just for a bit of metal?"
Whoop, there it was. My eyes widened and I stared at my father with disbelief. What had they done? What had they done? Ultron left the new core on the bench and sauntered past me to inspect the pile on the ground. It looked like something was beginning to dawn on my father's face as I continued to gape at them in disappointment. The redness of his cheeks a moment ago faded to the pale white of a sheet as the dots finally began to connect in his mind. He turned to Ultron with a question in his eyes, one that the robot paid no heed to, didn't even notice as he kicked a piece of the scrap lightly. "No," the android continued in a flippant tone, that, despite its apparent calm, plainly gave away the dangerous path this was going down, "though vibranium is quite the fascinating resource, I could easily have gained it myself, and your government would have been none the wiser. Despite their sudden interest in me." Oh, hell. He knows about the announcement. I wasn't sure how I could tell, but I could see the tension in his machined shoulders. He was on the edge and we were in some very deep doodoo if he decided to jump off.
"Ultron, I've gotten to know you well enough over the last couple of days to at least know that I'd never be able to pull the wool over your eyes," I said carefully, raising my hands in a gesture I wasn't sure was supposed to be defensive or placating. "You'd be able to tell right away that I wasn't going to let them sell you out. I'm predictable like that."
He whirled on me, his set maw and red back-lighting seeming more intimidating than ever before. I gulped, forcing myself not to step back, not to acknowledge the beads of sweat accumulating on my brow. For a moment I found myself wondering whether it would be more or less terrifying to see the expression on his face. We stood like that, staring each other down for several moments, every second expecting him to finally snap and break my neck. Then, he started laughing, held his sides and bent over like he was experiencing a painful belly laugh at a joke I hadn't heard. Hence I had no choice but to force a nervous grin and watch from my peripheral vision Pa edge towards something behind the bot while he was distracted. Poor Aleks looked terrified as well, but he kept glancing towards the rolling door of the garage.
Slowly the android seemed to compose himself, shaking his head as his cackles subsided. "Well, you're not wrong. You see, Katja," he said while gesturing grandly and approaching me, "I always had a good feeling about you. Well, not always. When I first heard about your arrival I thought I'd have to kill you. I mean, what were the odds of having all three members of the family being so naive as to go along with all my plans and think they were their own? No one's that fortunate." He chuckled again, and this time the metallic twang to it seemed so clear, so not human. My hands began to shake and my mouth went dry. This was it, what I had been waiting for all along: the moment Ultron kills us all. I was just as foolish as my Atyets and Aleks to start believing that just maybe he wouldn't. Now we would all pay for my inability to do what had to be done.
No, calm down, Katja, I told myself sternly. Nothing was ever completely hopeless as long as you retained all the control of the situation you had. Just keep him talking. He loves the sound of his own voice. "Okay, then," I choked out, not as smoothly as I would have liked, "what changed your mind?" Just give Pa enough time to do whatever it is he's doing.
"Well, I was right, of course. You were no where near as foolish as them. I came very, very close, whenever it was clear you where contemplating alerting someone of my existence. As you said, you were easy to read." I wasn't sure if I imagined his optics raking down my body, but it made me self-conscious nonetheless.
"I would appreciate it if you would stop talking about me in past tense," I grumble, folding my arms and taking a step back. He had gotten awfully close during his little rant. "And you didn't exactly answer my question."
"We'll see about what tense you should be spoken of in soon," he commented airily. "Your answer is that I knew you were smart. Not only smart enough to know that I don't need you, but also enough to figure out that you need me."
Okay, he now was definitely leaning over me and it was making me very uncomfortable. I cleared my throat and ignored the heat in my cheeks. "Don't flatter yourself."
"Huh," was all he said, but to my relief he leaned back out of my personal space bubble. "Of course, you have too much misguided loyalty to the human race to just give in, so you would need a little push." He plucked the replacement core off the bench and held it out to me. "This is the one thing I cannot do myself, for obvious reasons." He paused to hold a hand up to where his ear would be and I got the message, trying to hear what he was referring to, but there was nothing but the distant sound of oncoming traffic. Oh no. There wasn't supposed to be any traffic out here for miles. My expression returned to panic as I looked back at the villain in our midst. "Ah, yes, there they are. I was getting tired of keeping up this monologue while they tracked down their missing vibranium. I know Feliks would sell me out without a second thought, but you, Katja, you know you can't fight them without me, and without me running at full capacity. And they did just commit some serious treason. I thi-" Ultron jolted forward a bit and I jumped back, suspecting an attack, but instead he just continued twitching and fell to the ground with a loud clang, the lights in his eyes fading.
My head shot up to see Atyets shaking behind the android's prone form, holding some sort of device. "Atyets, no!" I shouted as I immediately crouched down beside the, what- unconcious? Dead?- body of Ultron. "Why would you do that?"
"He betrayed us! That blasted machine set it up so that we'd get caught," my Pa roared at me, and I hoped it was just his fear talking. "We have to give him and the Vibranium to them so they don't kill us!"
"No, you idiot! How can you always, always have the wrong end of the stick?" Now I was hyperventilating, wondering what I could do now that I didn't have Ultron giving instructions. I couldn't believe how quickly everything had changed.
"Guys, they are getting very close now," Aleks reminded us anxiously. "We need to get out of here."
I ran both hands through my hair. Keep control, keep control. "There's no way we can hide from them for long- they're the government, and we can't let them get their hands on Ultron, no matter what you think, Pa. If Sokovia uses him in this war they want, a lot of people are going to die," I reasoned with them and myself. That damn bot was right. "We need Ultron back online. Help me switch these cores over." Neither of the men moved to help me as I pried the greasy reactor from Ultron's cold metal fingers. "Now, damn it! We don't have much time!"
Aleks was the first to give in, realizing that I was rarely wrong about these things, and together we managed to flip the heavy android body over onto its back. "Okay," he said, and I could hear the fear in his voice, "so what exactly are we doing?"
I held the new core in the palm of my hand and forced my tight throat to swallow. "Ultron knew all along that you guys were happy to trade him for a bit of cash at the first opportunity, that neither of you really cared if he lived or died as long as you had your pockets lined. That much is obvious." I heard Pa snort from where he was hastily shoving the vibranium back into the bag, probably still intent on attempting to trade it and the robot for our freedom, naively thinking that would work. Why trade when they could just take them from our corpses? "This setup is his ultimatum; we bring him back to life, or we face the authorities alone."7
Aleks caught my eye and stared intently. "Do you trust him to help us if we do?"
I wasted a precious second considering the question. "Yes, Aleks, I think I do," I ended up answering resolutely. Though he looked skeptical, clearly wondering why I had changed my tune, he nodded once and his quick, masterful hands took to removing the old, faulty core from the mechanical chest. It was the first time I had seen my brother truly work at his trade in years, and I found it impressing even me. He got the dodgy machinery out in record time and plucked the replacement out of my hands. Of course, installing was a far more fiddly and intricate job than extracting, and I grew more and more nervous with each moment that passed. "Come on, come on, they'll be barging in here any second."
"I'm working as fast as I can, sis," he hissed, not slowing even as he tore the skin of his hand on a sharp protruding edge.
There was the sound of zipping and I looked up to see Pa had bagged up the metal- vibranium? -and he was now pacing anxiously. "You kids have to go. Forget that damned machine! If you stay here who knows what they'll do to you. I will try to reason with them, but you need to go," he urged us uselessly. I felt my temper broil again.
"You're the one who got us into this mess, Atyets, and I don't see you helping us with Ultron- who you fried," I burst out, glaring at him dangerously.
He snapped. "I said forget that damned machine," he roared, grabbing my brother by the shirt and hauling his thin body away from the robot harshly. Damn, the core was nearly in and my mechanic was gone! Car doors slammed outside. It was over. We were out of time and our musclebound bot was still out for the count.
In desperation I looked back to the reactor, feeling like time was moving in slow motion. It was far more complex than anything I had tinkered with as a child, but Aleks had been so close to finishing. There was only one more cord to be reattached. But where did it go to? A glance told me Pa was still trying to manhandle my brother out the back door before they burst in on us. I would receive no help from them.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I took a punt and pushed the cord into the first socket that caught my eye, hoping fate would be kind to me for once.
The roller door was suddenly forced open and I looked up to see men in black gear carrying large guns swarming the place. It was a sight that made Ultron seem like a cute little bunny. Feeling my chest grow stone cold from fear of what the future would hold I turned and saw them grab my family and shove them to the ground to restrain them, and them felt similar grips on my own arms, though I wasn't even trying to run so there was no need to tackle me. I felt numb. All of this stress, for nothing. Ultron would be reverse engineered and mass produced, becoming a weapon against mankind once again, only this time without a soul. I doubted they would use the same programming that rebelled against its previous user, instead it was far more likely that he would be reduced to locate enemy soldier and fire. No one deserved a life of slavery like that. No one.
As I was pulled towards the outside, where I would probably be pushed into one of the cliched SUVs and taken to a facility where I would be tortured for information I didn't have or wouldn't give, I stared at the concrete floor of the garage that had been my home for less than two nights. The floor which should have had a robot and a bag of vibranium on it.
With my heart skittering I swung my head from side to side, trying to locate the missing elements, seeing them nowhere in the agents' arms. Could it be?
Ultron, where are you now?
The drive to wherever it was they were taking me was long and bumpy as the large car drove over cracks in the road and rubble left over from the disaster. The windows of the back where I sat squished between two bulky soldiers of some kind were tinted so black I couldn't see a thing through them, and all my brain could process was, I'm going to die soon and no one's going to know or care. I'm going to be reduced to nothing but conspiracy theory fodder.
Of course, I had been separated from Aleks and my father, they having been pushed into their own respective armed escorts, and had absolutely everything confiscated off me that wasn't clothes. No phone, no wallet, no watch, nothing. They had even taken out my earrings, as if I could turn a gun into a weapon, let alone an earring. With no way to check the flow of time and companions that just weren't very companionable I couldn't know if I had been in that stuffy ride to my demise for ten minutes or ten hours, though I suspected it was more likely to be around the forty minute mark. A few times I had started counting seconds to pass time and keep myself calm, but honestly I just didn't have the attention span to last much longer than a minute or two before losing count.
At first the only thing on my mind was Ultron, where he could be after that disappearing act, and whether he would actually come through and help us. However, as the minutes passed and my eyes kept flicking to the rifles in my captors' hands my hopes grew dimmer and dimmer. It was clearly time to face reality; if Ultron really had woken up just in time to escape with that oh-so-important metal, the chances of him going out of his way for a few fleshies that had already outlived their usefulness were so slim I felt my cheeks flush for hoping at all.
"You guys have any idea how long we've been driving for? My butt's going numb," I said, trying to get something out of the guards for a third time. There was a sheet of thick black glass between the front and back of the SUV, so I was feeling pretty boxed in and honestly, I was probably already on the edge of insanity with all this fear and stress and worry. The least they could do was humor me with a little conversation to distract me from the things to come.
"Keep quiet," one of them grumbled in return, and I slumped back into the chair. At least the murderbot had a sense of humor.
Well, if they refused to play nice, I wouldn't either. "Where are my family? Where are you taking us? I swear, this is wrong on so many levels and if you don't let me go I'll just start screaming," I told them, clenching my hands into fists.
Apparently sick of me already, the one who had spoken before turned to me and growled, "I told you to be quiet!"
Okay, that was it. I warned them. Taking a deep breath, I harnessed my inner toddler, and let out an ear piercing shriek that lasted until my gasp of pain broke it off for my body to be riddled with spasms at the electricity now coursing through it.
Of course. I should have known they would just taze me.
When the current ceased I panted for a minute, let out a pitiful, "ow", and promptly slipped into unconsciousness.
When I was roused by a swift kick in the ribs I found it extremely disorientating to open my eyes to armed guards in some kind of military face mask-goggle combo. The dingy cell with peeling white paint wasn't really helping at all, either. "Where the hell am I?" I slurred intelligently, but they didn't bother replying as they hauled me to my feet. Their auras of stick-up-the-bum were so deja vu that the events of earlier that night came flooding back. But then, exactly how long had I been unconscious? It was probably the events of yesterday by now. "Aw, hell no. There's no way I'm going anywhere you guys want to take me!"
Strong words, but in the end, no matter how much I dragged my feet and whined along the way, the two buff soldiers just pulled me along like I weighed nothing. It was certainly a punch to the ego. I'm sure they thought I must have been off my rocker for not showing the right level of concern about my situation, but they obviously hadn't figured out that things were much easier to swallow when you cut them down to size. Yeah, sure, I could piss my pants and die from nerves, and I was pretty convinced that whatever laid at the end of this hallway they were taking me down was going to be the literal death of me. I knew all these things, but that didn't mean I wanted to think about them. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction; if I was going down, I was going down sassing.
Up ahead there was a big, heavy looking double door. Unadorned steel, high tech scanner at the lock. It did not look inviting in the least, and I started shaking my head frantically, trying to express just how much I did not want to go in there. Alas, the universe, or at least these two sticks-in-the-mud had no sympathy for my whatsoever. One of them used his free hand to punch in a long code and scan to gain access, and the doors slid aside like parting waters to show an interior that looked partway between an office and interrogation room. Inside there was a large desk with a bald, smiling man sitting at it, and across from him, a metre out of reach of the desk and by extension, him, sat an uncomfortable looking chair with restraints built onto the arms. Great. Looked like my kind of place!
I was brought to the chair and forced to sit down, then restrained like I was some kind of dangerous animal. I hadn't even done anything wrong! Okay, so I had sort of helped a mass murdering robot and downloaded a couple hundred songs, but that was nothing worth all the X-file crap these guys were subjecting me to. I hope the glare I was sending his Baldness was conveying all that.
"Well, good morning miss Dobronravova, I trust you slept well?" The question was so overly polite that I was convinced he knew I had been knocked out by his goons and was just being ironic. Well, two could play at that game.
"Oh, just swell, thank you. The bed in my cell was so comfortable, was it padded with your hair by any chance?"
His smile tensed, but not in an offended way, more like an exasperated 'I'm-surrounded-by-children' kind of thing. "I'm afraid not. Now, miss- may I call you Katja?- do you have any idea who I am?" There was no way I'd forget a face like that. His skin was completely smooth, so much so that I was more than a little jealous, his long nose was hooked, and his lips were thin and a little too red. It would have been impossible for me to guess his age. All these things would be fine if he wasn't wearing that disconcerting grin that showed too-perfect teeth, and staring right through me like I was a ghost, or about to be.
"Hate to hurt your ego, but I'm afraid not. And no, you may not call me Katja." I thrust out my chin, hopefully looking defiant while I cowered inside. He gave me the impression that I was as good as dead, anyway, no matter how I acted.
"Well, Katja," he began, his brown eyes looking soulless- or maybe I was just being dramatic, "my name is Vyacheslav Moskvin, and I work on behalf of our country. Now, it really isn't as dull as it sounds; I get to deal with all manner of strange occurrences. Like, for example, a bunch of nobody mechanics successfully breaking into a government institution and stealing a valuable mineral they should never have even heard of. Stranger than fiction." He said this all in such a honey-sweet and carefree tone that it sent shivers down my spine. I was used to that eerie sort of calm after my few conversations with Ultron- which I now knew were the times he was considering ending my life- but Moskvin was different. Ultron seemed to me to be trying to keep his temper under wraps so as to not start behaving irrationally, this guy seemed to be deriving glee from the fact that he had someone to pick apart. I bet this guy didn't even pretend to care about the greater good of humanity.
"But," he continued with the falsest little chuckle I've ever heard, "it gets even better. We catch these guys, of course, however there's no sign of the stolen property anywhere. And then, we find these." The papers are slammed onto the table in front of me for the second time: the diagrams and schematics Ultron had given us. To my everlasting shame, I had no words. I could only stare at the papers while my inner voice said, quite emphatically, oh crap. "Well, the plot thickens," he remarks at my silence with a wry grin. I knew I had the choice to plead innocent and hope they bought it. I could even say it was all my father's fault, that I had no part in any of it. I could lie and plead and cry and manipulate and probably be able to get off scott free, ready to flee back to China and my normal life. And boy, did I miss my normal life.
After staring at the would-be Ultron's face for a very long while, I brought my eyes back up to his beady brown ones. To hell with it, I wouldn't run away again. They were my family, and this was just as much my fight as theirs. I relaxed into the awful chair and put on my game face.
"Actually, this is good news to me, Moskvin. Now I won't have to feel bad for you being caught unawares when our ally comes to get us." Okay, so I sounded pretty confident, but I was one hundred percent bulling it. I knew there was an iceberg's chance in hell the android would come for us, but he didn't, judging by the way Moskvin's adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed thickly.
He composed himself quickly enough, though, maintaining that smile that didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. "Now, Katja, dear, do you really believe that this machine, if it even is operating again- unlikely, that it would have any interest in rescuing you?"
I stared him down and shrugged. "If there's one thing I know about that damned robot, it's that he loves being unpredictable," I leaned forward in my chair, "but it's really admirable that you have the courage to take that risk."
A/N: Whelp, there we go! Hope it didn't feel like I was throwing you guys into the deep end. It was going to happen eventually! It's going to take a bit of a time skip before Ultron makes a reappearance, a few weeks story time, probably. I still feel like this is the most badly thought out, convoluted, OOC little crack-fic, but hey, I enjoy expressing my love for Ultron in this fashion. I'm not gonna force you guys to read it~
But if you do, please leave a review! Constructive ones are the best!
Have a great day, everyone!