•33•

31 1 0
                                        

By the time they make it above, Ultron's robots are swarming the city, terrorizing those that haven't made it out yet. Kate lights her hands. "Have you thought about it yet, Bruce? Because I think now might be the time."

"Be careful," he replies, running off into the city. Meanwhile, Nat and Kate start fighting through the bots.

"We are above ground," Kate says into comms, blasting with one hand. "What now?"

"Just fight," Steve replies. "Protect the people."

"Roger that, Rogers."

Kate does as asked, Nat doing the same behind her. No matter how many robots they destroy, though, more just keep coming. There's gotta be a better way to do this. Last time, they had a nuke. This time, though, that's not an option. These things are coming from underground; they can't just blow it up.

After a few more minutes of fighting, the ground begins to rumble. Out in the distance, dust stirs, things begin to rip apart. And then the city starts to fly.

Ultron's voice rings out through his bots, surrounding them. "Do you see? The beauty of it, the inevitability. You rise, only to fall. You, Avengers, you are my meteor, my swift and terrible sword and the earth will crack with the weight of your failure. Purge me from your computers, turn my own flesh against me. It means nothing. When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world will be metal."

Kate blasts the nearest robot, then gets on comms again. "Um, Steve... what now?"

"Cap, you got incoming," Tony says.

"Incoming already came in," Steve replies. "Stark, you worry about bringing the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job: tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed... walk it off."

Kate chuckles. "Nice."

They continue fighting, making their way to the outskirts of the city. Kate spots Steve and Thor in the distance, just as Steve bounces his shield off the ground and Thor hits it like a baseball. He then flies up and hits a bunch of robots at once, then throws one into a nearby gas tank, sending up an inferno.

"Hey, not all of us are fire proof!" Nat protests, moving away.

"Your uniforms are," Kate argues, blasting a robot into a nearby wall.

"But my skin isn't!"

Kate shrugs, then turning back around and finding Thor completely gone, while the throng of robots continues to grow. Clint suddenly comes over comms. "We're all clear here."

"We are not clear!" Steve argues, kicking his shield into a robot's chest. "We are very not clear!"

"Alright, coming to you."

As they continue to fight, the throng gets smaller and smaller, though Kate knows this can't be all. This is just the first wave. Still, a break will be nice, especially seeing as she's dealing with two right now.

She narrowly dodges one of their blasts as Steve shouts, "Kate!"

Turning, she catches the shield, blocking the blasts, then hitting one robot in the legs and blasting the other in the head. She decapitates the first one, then swings around shoves the shield in the other's chest. Once they're down, she tosses the shield back to Steve. "Thanks. You know, I like this trend much more than the jumping out of planes one."

"That's fair."

Nat soon runs over from a few feet away, breathing hard but still going. Steve sighs, getting on comms. "The next wave's gonna hit any minute. What've you got, Stark?"

Fire and IceWhere stories live. Discover now