Tear Them Apart

____________________

--- May 2nd, 2015 - Avengers Tower, NYC ---

The Avengers plus Rhodes, Hill, Dr. Cho were gathered in Bruce's Lab.

Well nearly all of them anyway. Thor wasn't with them momentarily.

Y/N was examining the Legionnaire that housed Ultron's consciousness. Tony was glancing over at a case that was now wide open and completely empty. Everyone else was scattered around the room.

"All our work is gone," Bruce said, "Ultron cleared out, used the internet as an escape hatch."

Natasha added, "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," Rhodes recites before asking, "What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

"..Nuclear codes," Hill says as she looks up from pulling glass out her foot.

"Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes? He said he wanted us dead," Natasha says.

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

Clint adds, "He also said he killed somebody."

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

"Of course there was," Y/N tells them, tossing the Legionnaire head back onto the table.

He then tapped on a screen over to his right. Then, in the center of the room, the now-destroyed 3D image of JARVIS' consciousness pops up in front of them.

Bruce steps closer to it when he sees it, "This.. This is insane.."

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

"No, Ultron could've.. 'assimilated' Jarvis. This-This isn't strategy, this is... rage," Bruce says, clearly knowing so from.. personal.. experience with rage.

Suddenly, Thor barges into the room and grabs hold of Tony by his throat, holding him up. He steps through the hologram a few feet, causing it to dissipate.

"Woah, woah, woah! It's going around," Clint says.

Tony, now grabbing at Thor's hand, struggles but eventually gets out, "..Come on. Use your words, buddy.."

"Thor!," Steve shouts, "The Legionnaire."

Thor eventually drops Tony to his feet, causing him to stumble back a bit. But Thor was still glaring on the Iron Man.

"Trail went cold about a hundred miles out but it's headed north, and it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it. Again," Thor announces, still glaring straight at Tony.

"The genie's out of that bottle. Clear and present is Ultron," Natasha says.

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

Instead of an answer, Tony starts laughing.

Next to him, Bruce starts to shakes his head at him somewhat violently to get him to stop. Everyone else in the room looks over at them.

Y/N near scowls at Tony, "You think this is funny, Stark? This isn't the time for shits and giggles, not after what just happened less than half an hour ago."

"..No. It's probably not, right? Is this very terrible?," he replies sarcastically before adding with even more sarcasm nearly breaking out into laughter again while looking over at everyone in the room, "Is it so... is it so... it is. It's soo.. terrible."

"This could've been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand," Thor told him.

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

Bruce tries to interject, "..Tony, maybe this might not be the time to--"

"Really?! That's it?!," Tony exclaims, turning towards him, "You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls."

"Only when I've created a literal murder bot," Bruce retorts.

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

Steve tells him, "Well, you did something right. And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD."

"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?"

Y/N rolls his eyes at that, "No, I remember you failing to carry a nuke through a wormhole. I was the one who had to fucking literally rewind time in order to aim you towards said wormhole."

Rhodes was the only one unfamiliar enough with him to look at him at that, "I'm sorry, did he just say 'rewi--"

"Still, fact of the matter was a hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space," Tony said, interrupting Rhodes, "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 'endgame'. How were you guys planning on beating that?"

"Together," Steve tells him.

"...We'll lose.."

"Then we'll do that together, too," Steve says, before turning to the others, "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."

__________

--- May 2nd, 2015 - Sokovia ---

Wanda and Pietro Maximoff walk through gate of a fence surrounding an old dilapidated building in Sokovia. The sounds of people chattering outside near a food truck is one of the only sounds this night.

They enter in through the archway, and based on the interior, it's clear to see that the building used to be a church. But now it was rundown and empty..

Well, nearly empty...

A chair the size of a throne was placed in the center of the room. It was positioned so the back of it faced the entrance.

But on the chair, seemed to be a man covered in a hood or sheet of some sort. He was large, nearly a whole foot taller than most people.

Wanda speaks first, "Talk. And if you are wasting our time--"

"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....," His covered head turns towards the Twins, "You're wondering why you can't look inside my head."

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

The man stands full height and faces them, the cloth sliding off of him..

It was Ultron.

In a much, much less broken down body. This one was a clean silver plated body. He had what seemed to be antennae on the sides of his head.

His eyes glowed a darkish red.

"Oh, I'm sure they do. But you needed something more than a man," Ultron says, "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," Wanda tells him.

"Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create avengers, people create... smaller people? Uh..," Ultron pauses for a moment before continuing, "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 help save the world," Ultron starts walking away, before turning back to add, "But also... yeah."

_____

--- May 2nd, 2015 - HYDRA Research Base, Sokovia ---

Ultron leads the Twins into the Base.

A bunch of smaller sentries were walking around the place. 'Ultron Sentries' if you will. They each moved about around the place working on various things.

"We'll move out right away. This is a start, but there's something we need to begin the real work," Ultron tells them, muttering to himself, "And eventually someone to end it.."

Wanda was glancing around the place at the Ultron Sentries, "All of these are--"

"Me," Ultron said as he hovered up into the air and yanked on a chain.

He then turned around and dropped back to the floor in front of the Twins.

"I have what the Avengers never will. Harmony. They're discordant, disconnected. Stark's already got them turning on each other," He then glanced over at Wanda, "And when you get inside the rest of their heads..."

"Everyone's plan is not to kill them," Pietro remarks.

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

Pietro immediately replies, "I don't see the big picture, I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it every day."

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

"The records are not the picture."

"Pietro," Wanda interjects.

"No, please," Ultron tells her.

The Twins exchange a look. A shadow seems to pass over them, clearly still affected by the haunted memory.

"We were ten years old," Pietro starts, "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, and 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'," Wanda says.

Ultron merely tilts his head at them.

"We were trapped for two days," Pietro tells him.

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

"...I know what they are," Pietro says.

Ultron stays silent for a moment, but then starts nodding seemingly to himself, "I wondered why only you two survived Strucker's experiments. Now I don't.. We will make it right," He gestures towards Pietro, "You and I can hurt them. But..."

He then moves closer towards Wanda, his hand hovers inches away from her face, "You.. will tear them apart, from the inside."

Ultron then begins to walk away from the pair.

Wanda hesitates before asking, something bugging her, "..All of them?"

Ultron stops a few feet away. 

He just stands there for a moment as if 'processing' something. His eyes glance around the room before a smile seems to form on his metal face.

"No," Ultron admits, turning back around, "One of them you leave alone. He's.. special."

"...Superman?," Wanda asks.

Ultron grins, "Y/N L/N. Superman, The Man of Steel."

Then Pietro asks, "Why? What makes him so special?"

"Humanity, and by that I mean nearly every single person on this blue marble, view Superman as one of two things. He's either the devil or the second coming of Jesus," Ultron explains, "But Jesus was still technically just a man, and the devil is still confined by the laws of the universe.... Y/N is neither. Humans don't even stop and consider the alternative!"

"And what is 'the alternative'?," Wanda asks.

The Ultron Sentries in the background seem to stop what they were doing. They all slowly turn towards the three of them, their arms extend up into the sky.

As if they were worshipping something...

"Praise him!"

"He is God!," Ultron exclaims with his arms spread, then his head seems to twitch and he blinks a few times before looking away, "..the loneliest god... so alone, so very alone.. Even Earth, his home, is against him..."

He then walks away staring off in the distance while muttering to himself. Pietro merely glances over at his sister.

Wanda watches all the Ultron Sentries.

The Ultron Sentries were still chanting, their arms still up in the air.

"Praise him! Praise him! Praise him!"

____________________

Comment