Avengers: Age of Ultron (Charlotte Stark)

Ch. 14 You're an Avenger

Tony and I flew off to below the flying city. We needed to figure out what was causing the city to rise up.

Below the city, we hovered, waiting for Friday to figure out exactly what we were looking at. Ultron had used the Vibranium to construct a spire and some kind of generator. Only Vibranium would have been able to handle the torque this setup was putting on the spire and the rest of the mechanism.

Friday reached her determination. "The Vibranium core has got a magnetic feed. That's what's keeping the rock together. The antigravity keeps it rising."

That was the other problem. Sokovia wasn't hovering, or flying. It was rising, driven away from Earth's core. Tony and I had a bad feeling about why that might be the case, but we put it out of our minds to make sure we were focused on the here and now. "If it stops?" he asked.

"Right now the impact would kill thousands. If it gets high enough? Global extinction," Friday said. A light pinged in the HUD, and Friday added, "That building's not cleared. Tenth floor."

"I'm on it." I tell Tony and Friday.

I punched through the building's wall and into the apartment she had highlighted. A family cowered as the building shifted and disintegrated around them.

"Hi," I said. They goggled at me. I looked around. "Okay, get in the tub."

I tore the bathtub out and carried the family out as the building sagged and started to collapse.

"I got airborne," Friday said. "Heading up to the bridge."

"Cap, you got incoming!" I called out, flying towards him.

Cap was rolling off a half-destroyed car. "Incoming already came in," he said. There were drones everywhere. "You worry about bringing the city back down, Stark. The rest of us have one job: tearing these things apart. You get hurt, hurt 'em back."

I eyed the opposition. Not good odds. Time for one more little encouraging remark. "You get killed, walk it off," I said, and landed next to Steve.

A car was tipping off the edge, and he dove to reach it, but missed. Then, looking over the edge, he saw Thor had caught it. We thought we'd lost him. He threw the driver of the first car up for Cap to catch, then jackknifed down to dive after the other falling car.

Cap got the young woman up to the bridge, but before he could safely let her go, a drone attacked. "You can't save them all. You'll never—"

He gashed its face with his shield, but the shield got stuck. He held up one arm, using a new little doodad Stark had come up with. He squeezed his fist, and a magnetic recall activated, dragging the drone toward him. Cap spun as the shield connected with the magnet, using the leverage of the drone's weight to pivot the woman the rest of the way up onto the bridge.

The same motion also threw the drone off the edge of the bridge, where it fell, pinwheeling toward the distant ground.

"Never what? You didn't finish," he called after it.

Thor set the car full of passengers on the bridge and approached Cap and I. "What, were you napping?" I joked.

Having Thor around seemed to even the odds a little. We charged off. There were people to save and drones to destroy... and Ultron to find.

I saw Wanda ahead, looking as if she were an under-twelve soccer player suddenly thrown into a World Cup final. She was trying, but she was completely overwhelmed. There were drones everywhere. She wouldn't last.

The drones were strafing her hard as I made my move. I sprinted across a corner of the square, grabbed Wanda, and dove with her through the window of an apartment. We landed and rolled, covered in glass, but when I came up with my hands ready to fire, Wanda stayed sprawled on the ground.

"How could I let this happen?" she mumbled, mostly to herself. "How could I not know..."

I relaxed my arms and got her attention. Poor kid, I thought. You don't have time to freak out. You're in the big leagues now.

"Look at me," I said. "Look at me. Forget that."

She stared at me, her eyes huge and dark and terrified, but at least for the moment she wasn't looking out at all the Ultron drones trying to kill us.

"This is all our fault," she said.

I nodded. "Are you up for this? It's your fault, it's everybody's fault, okay, but are you up for this? I just need to know, because the..." I paused, looking out the window. "The city is flying. Okay, the city is flying, and there's an army of robots. None of this makes sense. But I'm going out there—"

I was interrupted by a bolt of energy punching through the wall between us. Reflexively, I shifted and fired a repulsor blast through the hole. Just outside, a drone exploded.

"Because that's my job," I went on. She was still looking at me. "I can't do my job and babysit. It doesn't matter what you did or what you were. If you go out there, you come to fight. And you fight to kill. Stay in here, you're good, I'll send your brother to find you. But you step out that door... you are an Avenger."

That was it. I didn't have any more time for speeches. "Good chat," I said.

I got ready to dive back in. But before I went, I looked back at Wanda and said, "Yeah, the city is flying."

I blast my way through the drones, taking down one after another. Then I got caught by two who pinned me behind a car. More were coming. I had no way out, maybe this is it, I thought. Everyone has to go sometime. I raised my hands, waiting for one of the approaching drones to show itself.

Two did, at the same time, and so did Wanda, striding out of the wrecked apartment building and making a small gesture at one of the drones. It lifted its arm and instead of killing me, blew the head off the other drone. I punched a fatal hole through the remaining drone with a drill arrow and looked around. They were target-free for the moment. "We're clear over here," I said into the comm.

"We are not clear. We are very not clear!" Cap responded.

Pietro chose that moment to appear next to Wanda. He had been streaking through the city, leaving a trail of destroyed drones in his wake, and he was panting hard. "Okay," I said. "We need to—"

"Keep up, old woman," Pietro said, and blurred away with his sister.

"Nobody would know," I sighed. "Nobody." Raising my hand towards the boy, preparing to fire. But this was my new life, where I do the right thing, so I just flew after the twins.