Tell Me When You Know

A Soul-sundered Sorrow

Adina, in what guaranteed to be a long time, had, for once, been truly enjoying Tony's party. What was there not to enjoy? Her best friend's parties had always had alcohol flow freer than water, and granted Adina was not a big fan of drinking herself into a stupor that left her unable to protect herself, but she didn't have any such qualms at the Tower. On the off chance that Tony wasn't looking out for her, JARVIS' steady presence saw and noticed everything.

The team was also in high spirits, and after the past three days they'd had, the break was more than deserved. They could always go back to scouring the Earth for the Maximoffs tomorrow.

Then, there was Natasha. Pretty in her white and black pleated knee-length dress, but beautiful with her red lips and the deadly glares she threw at any man or woman who dared to approach her and taint her personal space.

So of course, it was practically a given that the party was going to go to shit.

This was not just a train wreck, this was a dumpster fire on wheels, a clusterfuck wrapped in additional layers of chaos. This was a circus with extra clowns; said extra clowns being Tony's Iron Legion, now being controlled by, for some inexplicable reason, a being calling itself Ultron.

Was it an AI? A robot? A program gone rogue? Adina had not a single clue. All she knew was this name-robber — because what was the coincidence that another scientist created a being with the same name as Tony's scrapped program for global protection? — was sentient, it commanded Tony's Iron Legion, had a deep voice that reminded her of James Spader from The Blacklist, had used said deep voice to politely inform them of how unworthy they were and had some very hostile intentions.

What with them being attacked by its puppets from every fucking direction.

Adina stabbed her third robot with the handy screwdriver Tony had tossed her — she took a second to mourn her best friend's hard work and the hundreds of millions that had surely bled into this project, but then the robot turned to face her with its creepy half-broken helmet and its eye slits flickering, and she severed a few more wires where its chest was. Thank fuck they weren't in their full uniform. Tony had shown her how to disable his Iron Man suits after Loki's mind-whamming glow-stick scare. To her knowledge, she was the only person with that information. Not even Rhodey was aware of its vulnerable points besides the obvious ones.

She jumped down from the back of the robot — that was now all but a cramped piece of sparky wires and metal parts — and stepped one foot to the side of Mrs Stark's piano to see Doctor Cho hiding, her knees drawn to her chest and her brown eyes terrified. "Stay here. Whatever happens, do not come out." The woman gave a series of vigorous nods. It did little to comfort Adina.

Dodging another repulsor blast, she hurled the nearest object she had at her disposal, which was, unfortunately, one of Pepper's favourite vases, at the robot. Adina wasn't stupid, she knew a vase, no matter how much of an antique and expensive, would do absolutely nothing in the face of Tony's genius and six-hundred-and-forty-seven million, but it, at the least, slowed the creepy robot down enough, the brainwashed(?) piece of tech momentarily taken aback, for her to wrap herself around its neck and dislodge its head from the rest of its body.

She was not going to call it a 'him', or otherwise personify the robot. She'd lose her mind if she had to accept the fact that she was killing Tony's children. They weren't Tony's robots anymore. They were Ultron's puppets.

Ultron had crash-landed into the Tower, and their lives, from whichever hole it had emerged, and had taken command of the Iron Legion after...disabling JARVIS. That was the story she was sticking with right now, because if she had to entertain the alternate plausible reason for JARVIS' absence, then she would be of help to nobody.