Maybe Someday

Team Up

The Avengers stand in the lab. "All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out, used the internet as an escape hatch."

"Ultron," Steve murmurs, angry.

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

"He's in your files, he's in the internet," Rhodey starts. "What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

"Nuclear codes," Hill realizes.

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

"Nukes," Natasha asks. "He said he wanted us dead."

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

Clint interrupts. "He also said he killed somebody."

"But there wasn't anyone else in the building," Hill says, confused.

"Yes, there was." Tony brings out his connector. An image of Jarvis comes up, destroy. Completely and utterly demolished.

"This is insane," Bruce comments.

"Jarvis was the first line of defense. He would've shut Ultron down, it makes sense," Steve says.

"No," Bruce says. "Ultron could've assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy, this is rage."

Thor walks in wearing his armor and grabs Tony around the neck, lifting him up.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Tony says.

"It's going around," Clint remarks.

"C'mon, use your words, buddy."

"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark," Thor says.

"Thor!" Steve calls. "The Legionnaire."

Thor sets Tony down and he backs away. "Trail went cold about one hundred miles out but it's headed north, and it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it, again."

"The genies out of that bottle," Natasha interjects. "Clear and present is Ultron."

"I don't understand," Helen says. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"

Tony starts laughing and Bruce tries to stop him. "You think this is funny?" Thor asks.

"No," Tony says, sarcasm entering his voice. "It's probably not, right? Is this very terrible? Is it so, is it so, it is, it's so terrible."

"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand."

"No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

"Tony," Bruce calls, "Maybe this might not be the time."

"Really?" Tony asks. "That's is? You just roll over, show your belly, every time someone snarls."

"Only when I've created a murder-bot."

"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we even close to an interface?"

"Well, you did something right," Steve interjects. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?" Tony asks.

"No, it's never come up," Rhodey says, sarcasm dripping from his tone.

"Saved New York?"

"Never heard that."

"Recall that? A hostile army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but that up there? That's, that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?"

"Together," Steve says.

"We'll lose."

"Then we'll do that together, too. Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place. Let's start making it smaller."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Wanda, Pietro and Annabelle walk through the dark streets of Sokovia, towards a church in the center of the town. "Talk," Wanda says. "And if you are wasting our time."

A man sits in a chair, turned away and covered in a cloak. "Did you know this church is in the exact center of the city? The elders decreed it so that everyone could be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief. You're wondering why you can't look inside my head."

"Sometimes it's hard. But sooner or later, every man shows himself."

The man turns around, revealing his metallic form. "Oh, I'm sure they do." Wanda backs away, towards her brother. "But you needed something more than a man. That's why you let Stark take the scepter."

"I didn't expect. But I saw Stark's fear. I knew it would control him, make him self-destruct."

"Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create Avengers. People create," he pauses for a moment. "Smaller people? Uh, Children! I lost the word there. Children. Designed to supplant them, to help them end."

"Is that why you've come? To end the Avengers?"

"I've come to save the world. But also, yeah." They travel back to Strucker's base, to the underground lab. "We'll move out right away. This is a start, but there's something we need to begin the real work."

"All of these are."

"Me," Ultron finishes. "I have what the Avengers never will. Harmony. They're discordant, disconnected. Stark's already got them turning on each other. And when you get inside the rest of their heads."

Pietro looks bored. He turns to Annabelle who looks nervous. She turns invisible and starts to look around, quietly. "Everyone's plan is not to kill them."

"And make them martyrs? You need patience. Need to see the big picture."

"I don't see the big picture. I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it every day." Wanda looks at him.

"You lost your parents in the bombings. I've seen the records."

"Their records are not the picture."

"Pietro," Wanda warns.

"No, please," Ultron asks.

"We were ten years old. Having dinner, the four of us. When the first shell hits, two floors below, it makes a hole in the floor, it's big. Our parents go in, the whole building starts coming apart. I grab her, roll under the bed and the second shell hits. But, it doesn't go off. It just, sits there in the rubble, three feet from our faces. And on the side of the shell is painted one word."

"Stark."

"We were trapped two days."

"Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think, this will set it off. We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us."

"They know what they are."

Annabelle turns visible and looks at Ultron who stares right back. "I was taken from my family and frozen. Everyone I cared about is dead. Only one remains."

"I wondered why only you three survived Strucker's experiments. Now I don't. We will make it right. You and I can hurt them," Ultron says to Pietro and Annabelle. He turns to Wanda, "But you will tear them apart. From the inside."

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