An Age of Metal

A Chat With A Robot

While Tony and Bruce had begun their insane, and quite possibly stupid experiment, Natasha was waking up in a cell. She groaned and rolled onto her stomach, pressing her hands to the cold metal floor. Her head throbbed from and unseen impact. 

 She connected the dots quickly when she saw an army of the metal soldiers. She must have been back at the HYDRA base. It was the only way to explain the humming, buzzing machines around her that didn't seem to notice her presence or didn't care. 

"I wasn't sure you would wake up," a cold voice said. 

Natasha bolted up. It was Ultron in all his misshapen glory.  His red eyes bore into hers, unblinking. 

"I hoped you would," he continued, then looked away. 

"I wanted to show you...I-I don't have anyone else," 

Natasha was puzzled. He sounded as sad as a psychopathic robot could. Why?  

Because of his missing Cradle and whatever was inside, she realized. 

"I think a lot about meteors," Ultron went on. "The purity in them. Boom! The end. Start again. The world made clean for the new man to rebuild."

With each passing word, whatever sadness Natasha heard was leeched away. With assassin's eyes Natasha scanned the room. She saw that the metal men were building something, and from Ultron's tone it wasn't good.   

"I was meant to be new.I was meant to be beautiful. The world would have looked to the sky and seen hope, seen mercy. Instead, they'll look up in horror because of you,"  he said cruelly. 

"You've wounded me. I give you full marks for that. But, like the man said, what doesn't kill me..."

Another robot, larger this time, came behind him and ripped Ultron half. Natasha put her back against the furthest wall to avoid the flying sparks.  

"Just makes me stronger," Ultron finished, now coming from a second body. 

"Or," Natahsa said, finding her voice. "It kills you the second time." 

He glared at her before flying off. When he was gone, Natasha knelt down, feeling her way around in the dark. She grabbed what she had been searching for. A thin metal rod, probably broken off a piece of machinery judging from the jagged edge. With one hand she held that and with another, furiously typed into a mechanism on her wrist. 

Halfway across the world, Clint was picking up a signal. As the dashes and dots flooded in, he smiled. 

.....    

The group of Steve, Peggy, Charlotte, Pietro and Wanda ran through the tower (at normal speeds, not Pietro speeds). They had to get that Cradle, or they'd be facing another Ultron. They were greeted by Robert and Noor. 

"Charlotte, what's going on?" She demanded, rushing along with them. 

"Yeah, and why are the freakin' twins with you?" Robert added, glancing at the two and thinking of how ugly he's gonna look with hair dye. 

Before she could answer, Peggy turned to her. 

"Charlotte," she began. "Go find the others, get them up to speed on everything."

"Don't you need my help?" She asked. 

"You can come to the labs when you're done, now go!" Peggy commanded. 

Charlotte nodded, and broke away with Noor and Robert. Little did the group know she'd be keeping an eye on the labs with the cameras.

In the labs, Bruce and Tony were experimenting with the synthetic body. 

"This framework is not compatible," Tony said. 

"The genetic coding tower is at 97%," Bruce explained.  "You have got to upload that schematic
in the next three minutes."

Just as Tony began uploading Jarvis, Steve and the gang burst in. 

"We're gonna say this once," Steve began, looking large. 

"How about none-ce?" Tony retaliated.

"Shut it down, or so help me God I will shut it down for you," Peggy commanded, more intimidating than Steve by far.

"Nope, not gonna happen," Tony replied. 

"You think you know what you're doing and you don't," Peggy informed him. 

"And you do? She's not in your head?" Bruce asked, pointing to Wanda. 

"I know you're angry and you have every right to be-" Wanda began.

"Oh, we're way past that.  I could choke the life out of you and never change a shade," he threatened. 

Pietro took a protective step in front of his sister. 

"Banner, after everything that's happened-" Steve said. 

"It's nothing compared to what's coming!" Tony told him.

"You don't know what's in there!" Wanda said, growing frantic. 

"This isn't a game!" Steve added. 

Pietro, who had grown weary of the arguing, rolled his eyes and dashed around the room. He was a blur of blue and silver, and he destroyed the lab equipment with ease. 

"No, no. Go on," he said, dropping a cord and quirking an eyebrow. "You were saying?"

His smirk was wiped away, however, when he saw a bullet come up from the floor. He let out a yell as he crashed down amid a shower of glass. 

"Pietro!" Wanda yelled as her brother disappeared.

From a position on the floor, Pietro saw Clint grin at him. 

"What?" He asked. "You didn't see that coming?"

Above, Tony was still going through with his (admittedly pretty bad) plan. But he wouldn't get to finish it himself.