Chapter Six

"Worthy," a jumbled robotic voice drawled, followed by clanging footsteps. All of us stood from our seats and turned to face the noise while Tony pulled his thin glass remote from his jacket pocket to see why one of the broken down Iron Legion robots was clambering its way into our private party. "No," it said in a clearer voice, turning slowly to face us. "How could you be worthy? You're all killers."

"Stark," Steve said without moving his eyes from the bot.

Tony tapped the remote against his palm a few times. "Jarvis?"

"I'm sorry I was asleep," the bot apologized before shaking its head in a nonsensical fashion and turning to stare at us with its glowing eyes. "Or... I was a dream. There was this terrible noise and I was tangled in... in strings." It staggered about, going to touch its hand to its head before realizing it didn't have a hand. "I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy."

"You killed someone?" Steve asked, raising his eyebrows and taking the slightest step forward.

"Wouldn't have been my first call," the bot shrugged lazily. "But down in the real world, we're faced with ugly choices."

Thor stepped slowly closer to his hammer when the bot wasn't looking. "Who sent you?"

There was a rewinding sound before Tony's voice played through the speakers built into the robot's shoulders. "I see a suit of armor around the world."

Everyone turned to face Tony at the same time with the same expression- they wanted answers. Bruce was the one to answer the unspoken question, however. "Ultron..."

"In the flesh!" Our attention was diverted to readying ourselves for a fight as the robot forced our attention back to it with its outburst. "Or no, not yet. Not this... Christmas. You see, I'm on a mission."

Maria's gun quietly clicked at the same time Thor lifted his hammer from the table, and I spread my fingers out to start heating them up while Natasha asked it, "What mission?"

"Peace in our time."

The wall behind the bot crumbled as two fully functional Iron Legion bots burst through it, and the rest of us only had seconds to react. Steve flipped the coffee table up in front of us while Maria and Rhodey dropped to the floor. Natasha grabbed Bruce by the hand and pulled him behind one of the couches. Thor swung his hammer at one of the incoming bots, and Tony ran off to where I couldn't see him anymore.

Clint was blasted over the railing by one bot, but before it could fly down after him I used the couch as a spring and jumped off the back of it, grabbing onto the robot by its neck and burning through the metal under its chin. I shoved my hand all the way through its head until I reached its circuit board and ripped it out, crashing into the floor with a harsh thud and it on top of me when it shut down.

When I pushed the broken bot off me and sat up, I saw that Steve had followed in my footsteps and was flying on the back of his own bot, trying to shut it down by ripping wires out of its neck. I rolled under the railing, dropping to the first level of the floor that was being quickly turned to rubble by the unexpected battle, and saw that Natasha and Bruce were running away from their own bot.

By the time I saw Tony climbing the railing, he had already kicked off and jumped onto the bot that was chasing down Nat and Bruce to distract it. After pushing myself back up to my feet, I ran over to the bar and jumped over it, grabbing the hidden gun underneath before hurrying over to where I had just seen Clint hide. I twisted behind the pillar he was kneeling behind and handed him the gun, an action he thanked me for with a nod before cocking the gun and stepping out of hiding to start firing.

I looked out from behind the pillar and saw that Tony was still attempting to dismantle the same bot from before. "Tony, shut it down!"

"One sec!" he yelled back while all the remaining robots started chanting, "We are here to help."

I ran back up the short flight of stairs, grabbing Steve's shield on the way. "Heads up, Cap!" When he turned to look at me, I tossed the shield his way just in time for him to decapitate the robot that had been trailing after him.

"It is unsafe."

I pivoted on my heel at the sudden voice behind me, stumbling backwards from the surprise. Thankfully, Thor stepped in and sent the bot flying back into a wall, causing it to shatter into pieces. "Nice timing," I praised breathlessly, patting his shoulder.

With all of the Iron Legion either shut down or turned to scrap metal, the scattered team all turned to look at Ultron. "That was dramatic," he commented, looking over the destruction. "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? Look at these." He lifted one of the bots from the ground that was only a torso, crushing its head in his hand before dropping it again. "These puppets. There's only one path to peace. The Avengers extinction."

Too fast for me to notice even though I was standing right next to him, Thor had thrown Mjolnir with full force at Ultron, causing him to crash back into the wall and join the rest of the Iron Legion in bits on the floor. As he powered down, the lights in his eyes dimmed and oil leaked out of his head like blood- his robotic voice crackling. "I had strings, but now I'm free."

The room was quiet while we waited to see if any more enemies were going to come soaring in out of nowhere, but once I was sure we were safe for now, I let out a sigh and ran a hand over my forehead and back through my hair.

"What... was that?" Steve asked tensely, jaw clenched as he looked back and forth over every member of the team.

Nobody answered, likely because nobody knew exactly what it was. Bruce, Tony and I knew what it was supposed to be, but none of us had any idea what it had actually become. I was the first person to move, walking over to where Tony had landed on the floor and grabbing his hand to help him stand up.

"Thor, some of them made it out. Follow them." Steve instructed, walking forward and picking up one of the few robots that was still in tact. "Stark, Banner. We are going into your lab, and you are going to tell us exactly what that was."

Without waiting for an answer, Steve started in the direction of the lab with the robot remains in his hand. Thor called his hammer back and flew out one of the already broken windows while everyone else came back to their senses and followed after Steve.

Inside the lab, Bruce sat at one of the computers to see what all Ultron had gotten into while we were having the party. The rest of the team was scattered around the room, leaning against walls or sitting against tables while Tony stood in front of the robot carcass Steve had dropped onto the table in the middle of the room.

"All our work is gone," Bruce said disbelievingly. "Ultron cleared out. He used the Internet as an escape."

"Ultron," Steve muttered, shaking his head.

"He's been in everything," Natasha concluded. "Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other."

Rhodey crossed from one end of the room to the other, sitting next to Maria and holding his injured shoulder. "He's in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

"Nuclear codes," Maria sighed, and Rhodey nodded.

"Nuclear codes. Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" Natasha crossed her arms over her chest. "He also said he wanted us dead."

"He didn't say dead," Steve corrected. "He said extinct."

Clint leaned against the metal railing across from where I was standing. "He also said he killed somebody."

Maria plucked a piece of glass out of the bottom of her foot and plopped it onto the table. "There wasn't anybody else in the building."

"Yes there was." Tony walked into the middle of the room and tapped his remote against the air, opening up what used to be the visual representation of Jarvis, but was now a flickering orange mess. Even though he was just an AI system, seeing him so dismembered sent a chill down my spine that broke my heart.

I walked up to the image with my hands slightly out in front of myself, shaking my head. "Why would he do this?" I asked no one in particular, trailing my hand down the trembling hologram. "He was supposed to be a protector, not..."

"Jarvis was the first line of defense." I looked at Steve over my shoulder, but turned back to Jarvis when I saw the empathy mixed with anger in his eyes. "He wanted to shut Ultron down, it makes sense."

"No," Bruce disagreed, joining me next to what was left of Jarvis. "Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy, this is... rage."

Loud footsteps called my attention towards Thor as he marched into the room, features set into a grim look of determination. All sympathetic thoughts towards Jarvis disappeared from my mind as Thor gripped Tony by the throat and lifted him from the ground, staring coldly as everyone quickly stood from their seats.