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Wanda swung again, and fired her blast of energy at the target 100 feet away. As with the targets 50 feet and 75 feet away, it shattered into several pieces, and Natasha nodded in approval.
"Improves every day," the older woman remarked, idly swinging a Taser. "Now let's try moving targets while flying."
The next part of the workout involves more targets, but these are harmless drones supplied by Stark Industries. They were based on the design of the Ultron drones, but without all the obvious "I want to wipe out humanity" aspects. Plus, they were cheap and disposable enough to be used each and every day.
Three drones came flying in, hovering around the gym where training was taking place today. Wanda concentrated her mind, lifted herself up, and began looking for targets. She destroyed the first drone soon enough; it was idling by and not focused on her. The other two drones, having taken note of this, began to evade her attacks.
Wanda moved towards another drone, which was at the northeast corner of the gym, and fired at it again and again until it fell to the floor. Natasha gave her a thumbs up and said "Now get the last one."
Wanda hovered over towards the last drone, which was larger and obviously meant to resemble Ultron Prime, and focused her energy and mind to attack it. But before she could, it spoke.
"Worthy? How could you be worthy?"
That was new, thought Wanda. The drones hadn't been able to speak before. Must be a new addition someone on the technical end made. Ultron's voice, in the flesh.
Before she could respond, it all came crashing down on her again.
She felt it, deep inside. Her powers included a telepathic link to her brother, her only surviving relative. And when it was severed, she felt it hard and heavy. She couldn't help but scream in agony as everything around her came crashing down.
The awful thing was, he died saving a teammate and a civilian. Of course he died for something. That would have been in Pietro's character. But why did he have to do it? Why did he have to leave her, the one who he always protected, alone in the world?
She was still wondering these things when Ultron himself came crashing down, wounded and beaten.
"Wanda," he said with authentic concern. "If you stay here, you'll die."
How dare this soulless automation try to fake distress after taking the one thing she cared about the most.
"I already did," she said with a vengeance, tearing out the robotic heart that powered the vibranium mechanization. With that, Ultron's main form died. Just like she had.
She should have died in Sokovia, with her brother. But the Vision had arrived in the nick of time, and took her back to the helicarrier to be hounded and examined like a stray dog…
"Wanda, Wanda, are you ok?"
That was Natasha' Romanoff's voice. Wanda snapped out of her own flashback to find herself on the gym floor, sprawled out on a mat. The drone, which had triggered the nightmare, was all over the gym; it had somehow been utterly destroyed.
"Um, sort of. What happened?"
Natasha pretended to think. "You were about to finish that last drone, then your eyes went red. Next thing I knew, you were screaming and ripping that drone like it was nothing. Ripped a bunch of the mats and other equipment, however."
Wanda took in the full consequences of her self-induced hallucination. Half the walls were burnt with something that Wanda guessed was her red energy fully catalyzed. Natasha was lucky not to have been hit by it, or else she would be on fire.
"That… this has never happened before."
"Any idea what triggered it?" Natasha had slipped back into defensive business mode, as she was prone to do when she smelled danger right in front of her.
"I was thinking about what happened in Sokovia. What happened to Pietro." She almost expected herself to blow up again, but she didn't.
"Hmm. Forget about it. I'd go to your room and let yourself clear your mind. We don't want this happening where it's more than just us at risk." Natasha began texting on her phone. "Oh, and I'm telling Cap. Nothing personal, just making him aware of the situation."
So Wanda did, shaken.
So thinking about Ultron, thinking about how he killed Pietro, would send her out of control. The people at HYDRA seemed to be aware of this: that her powers were occasionally unstable. That was why they paired her with Pietro, not because he was her twin brother, but because he seemed to have a relatively stabilizing influence on her. He was the only one HYDRA could find.
She hadn't told anyone this little secret yet, mostly because she didn't trust them with it. A month ago, the Black Widow would have kicked her out of the team, not to mention the country. Even now, Wanda didn't need mind reading powers to tell that Natasha was telling Steve Rogers that the Scarlet Witch was a potential hazard to them all.
Steve Rogers. Wanda didn't realize it, but now she did. He might have been another one of those who were able to keep her from going into a meltdown. She doubted he'd been, well, born with the ability. He must have picked it up somehow.
Of all the people to come into my life…
That was why she didn't blow up crying over Pietro's dead body, or on their first date. It was Steve. The man with a heart of gold on the inside.
She just hoped he knew what he was about to get himself into.
Steve was just about finished for the morning. He didn't know why Fury wanted him and Falcon to do yet another hostage situation/evacuate the civilians scenario, but he had a guess that Sam not being at Sokovia during the Ultron Crisis had a bit of something to do with it.
As he had once a week for several weeks now, Steve rushed into the fake building, using his shield to knock down the dummies representing terrorists taking the building and the people inside hostage. He was careful to avoid hitting any of the dummies with a green patch, they represented hostages. He put the first green hostage on the ground, then put them outside the window. Sam would then swoop down and take the hostage safely out of the way.
The second floor was not much different: just a bunch of hostages and terrorist dummies placed together. After taking out all the terrorists, Steve tossed the hostage dummies one at a time to Sam, who flying in his Falcon suit.
Steve jumped out the last window from the second floor and met up with Sam. "How'd we do?"
"Little under a minute. Think that'll shut up Fury now?"
Steve rolled his eyes. "You never know-"
The cell phone rang. Natasha. "What's up Nat?"
"It's Wanda."
Steve couldn't believe that Wanda had somehow wrecked the gym in a bout of dreamscapes, so he had to go and see it for himself.
It looked like a bombed out building. "And you're saying Wanda did all this?"
"Yep. Maybe we shouldn't have installed the Ultron playbacks, even though I thought it adds to the battlefield simulation."
"You did what?" Steve knew about the Ultron simulation playbacks, but he didn't expect Natasha to use them this early. "I thought you were the one who avoid setting her off."
"Cap, she needs to be ready for the real world. It doesn't stand around for her to cry over her dead brother forever."
"Like you do with Bruce?" Steve's heart rate was going up at an exponential rate.
"Don't make this personal, Cap. You're not the one who's around her when she's going crazy. In fact, I don't think you've ever been around her when she has a breakdown. Is that a coincidence?"
"I don't know," said Steve as he turned his back to Natasha and headed for Wanda's room.
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