Winter Widows Child

Chapter 7: New Enemy

"What's the rumpus?" Bruce asked, walking into the lab. I had been doing some school work in the lab when they walked in and I figured they wanted to be alone so I got up to leave, but Tony stopped me. "Not so fast kid, you can help." He said and I sat back down.

"Well, the scepter. You see, we were wondering how Strucker got so inventive. So I've been analyzing the gem inside. You may recognize..." He said placing Jarvis' mind in the middle of the room.

"Jarvis."

"Doctor."

"Started out, Jarvis was just a natural language UI. Now he runs the Iron Legion. He runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper."

"Top of the line."

"Yes."

"I suspect not for long." Jarvis said

"Meet the competition." Tony said, placing an even bigger mind looking thing next to Jarvis'.

"It's beautiful." I said getting up walking towards the thing.

"If you had to guess, what's it look like it's doing?"

"Like it's thinking." Banner spoke up.

"I mean, this could be... It's not a human mind." Tony hummed in agreement, "I mean, look at this." Bruce said gesturing to the brain, "They're like neurons firing."

"Down in Strucker's lab, I saw some fairly advanced robotics work. They deep-sixed the data, but... I gotta guess he was knocking on a very particular door."

"Artificial intelligence."

"This could be it, Bruce. This could be the key to creating Ultron."

"I thought Ultron was a fantasy." I spoke up.

"Yesterday it was. If we can harness this power, apply it to my Iron Legion protocol?"

"That's a man-sized "if.""

"Our job is "if."" Tony said walking around the lab, "What if you were sipping margaritas on a sun-drenched beach, turning brown instead of green? Not looking over your shoulder for Veronica."

"Don't hate. I helped design Veronica."

"As a worst-case measure, right? How about a best case? What if the world was safe? What if, next time aliens roll up to the club, and they will, they couldn't get past the bouncer?"

"The only people threatening the planet would be people." I said.

"I want to apply this to the Ultron program. But Jarvis can't download a data schematic this dense. We can only do it while we have the scepter here. That's three days. Give me three days."

"So you're going for artificial intelligence, and you don't want to tell the team?"

"Right. That's right. You know why? Because we don't have time for a city hall debate. I don't want to hear "the man was not meant to meddle" medley. I see a suit of armor around the world."

"Sounds like a cold world, Tony." Bruce said.

"I've seen colder. This one, this very vulnerable blue one, it needs Ultron. Peace in our time. Imagine that."

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We worked for three days straight. Coding and decoding and recoding again. Calculating different things, drinking tons of coffee, and quite a bit of getting yelled at by my mom causing I'm not getting enough sleep. Today was the day of Tony's party so I left Tony and Bruce to finish up while I got ready with my mom. When I got to my room I took a shower and went to my mom's room so she could do my hair. She did simple curls and let me do my makeup. I wasn't a big fan of makeup so I kept it natural and went to my room to put my dress on. It was a very simple short cream slip on dress that I paired it with some matching heels. I put on some jewelry and went back to my moms room to find her dressed and ready as well. We grabbed our phones, strapped our thigh holsters on, and took the elevator up to the party. I parted ways with my mom as we walked into the room, looking for Sam since he said he'd be here. I soon found him hanging out with Steve at the pool table. I smiled and walked faster.