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❝ s o r r y ❞

"Full offense," Celeste retorts, glancing between the distorted robot and the others warily. "But what the fuck?"

Her eyebrows knit together in frustration as she attempts to read the thing's mind, but the only feedback she gets is everyone else's thoughts.

"Stark?" Steve questions, glancing to the man.

"JARVIS," Tony mutters, ignoring Steve as he waits on a response from his AI.

"I'm sorry I was asleep," the robot says, lopsidedly stepping closer. "Or I was a dream."

"Reboot," Tony calls out to JARVIS. "We got a buggy suit."

"I heard this terrible, terrible noise and I was tangled in strings," the robot continues, oblivious to Tony's commands. "Had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy."

"You killed someone?" Steve reiterates, growing defensive.

"I think the better question is why he did it," Celeste suggests.

"My guess would be because he's a bad guy," Clint offers. "Last I checked, they don't exactly get along with good guys."

"Wouldn't have been my first call," the robot remarks. "But down in the real world, we're faced with ugly choices."

"Who sent you?" Thor demands.

The robot opens his mouth, but it's Tony's voice that comes from it. "I see a suit of armor around the world"

"Ultron," Bruce breathes out.

"In the flesh. Or no, not yet," Ultron declares, nearly falling over as he looks down at his mangled body. "Not this Christmas. But I'm ready, and I'm on a mission."

"What mission?" Natasha questions.

"Peace in our time."

Tony's recently programmed service robots burst through the walls behind Ultron as the sentence leaves his lips, flipping a switch within the group as their fight or flight instincts take over.

Steve flips the coffee table, sending it and their leftovers flying through the air. Celeste and Clint slide out of the way, taking cover behind the couch as Natasha and Bruce dive over the bar. Thor, Tony, and Rhodey don't have time to move, already fighting off two robots.

"Try not to get shot this time," Celeste warns.

"No promises," Clint jokes.

The two stand up in unison, their own ideas forming. Clint starts to sprint towards Steve's shield on the other side of the room and one of the robots immediately spot him, opening up its palm to shoot at him. Celeste glances around, spotting a large piece of glass from the table Steve broke. Diving over the couch in one swift motion, she slams it into the neck of the robot and kicks it towards Thor, who bats it away easily with his hammer.

Gold and green parts of what looks suspiciously like an IronMan suit fly past Celeste and onto Brielle's body and the psychologist immediately destroys one of the robots with a blast from her suit.

"Note to self," she mutters, her gaze landing on Helen hiding behind a piano as a robot flies closer. "Ask Tony to build a badass suit for my birthday."

Celeste closes her eyes and teleports in front of Helen, grabbing the vase of flowers off of the piano to smash over the robot's head. As it reboots, she grabs onto the woman's arm, not bothering to explain herself, she teleports them to a different floor of the tower.

"Sorry," she apologizes, noticing her shocked expression. "But it's not safe for you up there. I'll come get you when it is."

Not waiting for a response, she closes her eyes once more and teleports back, nearly getting hit in the head as Clint throws the shield across the room. Steve catches it and immediately throws it at the last robot, ending the short fight.

"Guess I took her out of the room for nothing," Celeste huffs.

"That was dramatic. I'm sorry, I know you mean well. You just didn't think it through. You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change. How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to evolve?"

Ultron begins to crookedly pace the floor as he monologues, his gears whirring as he picks up the decapitated head of one of the robots.

"Like these- these puppets," he continues, shattering the robot's head. "There's only one path to peace; the Avenger's extinction."

Thor throws Mjolnir and sends Ultron flying into the wall, where the body shatters upon impact as Mjolnir flies back into his grasp.

"I had strings," Ultron's voice growls as the blue light in his eyes slowly fades. "But now I'm free."

➵➵➵➵

In the early morning hours, the large group finds themselves either sitting or standing around one of Tony's many research labs, still attempting to process the night's events as Tony, Brielle, and Bruce sort through their scientific data. Celeste sits with Natasha on the steps leading into the main part of the lab, practically putting all of her weight on the woman to remain upright as the fatigue from her teleportations seeps in. She doesn't seem to mind though, too busy reading information on the tablet in her hands to even notice.

"Is anyone finding any of our work?" Brielle questions frustratedly, tossing aside a tablet and dropping into one of the expensive rolling chairs.

"All our work is gone," Bruce complains. "Ultron cleared it out, used the internet as an escape route."

"Ultron," Steve repeats, still wrapping his mind around the existence of a murderous robot.

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

"He's in your files, he's in the internet." Rhodey begins to pace the marbled white floor, thinking out loud. "What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

"Nuclear codes," Mariah catches on, glancing up from where she's picking glass out of her foot with tweezers.

"Like nuclear codes," Rhodey agrees, crossing his arms. "Look, we need to make some calls. Assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" Natasha questions. "He said he wanted us dead."

"Nukes do seem a little extreme," Celeste adds. "But, then again, so is a killer robot."

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

"He also said he killed somebody," Clint points out.

"There wasn't anyone else in the building," Mariah says.

"Yes, there was," Tony reminds them, flicking the sleek device in his hand to cause a broken down version of JARVIS's mainframe to appear in the center of the room.

"This is insane," Bruce mutters, walking closer to the holographic shattered orange sphere.

"JARVIS was the first line of defense to shut Ultron down," Steve attempts to reason. "It makes sense."

"No, Ultron could've disassembled Jarvis," Bruce says, mostly to himself. "This isn't strategy. This is rage."

Thor storms through the hologram and wraps his hand around Tony's throat, lifting the man off the ground. Celeste immediately perks up, watching warily as Tony struggles to breathe.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Rhodey exclaims.

"It's going around," Clint says nonchalantly.

"Come on," Tony wheezes. "Use your words, buddy."

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

"Thor!" Steve shouts.

Thor's glare fades and he releases Tony, seeming to realize his stronghold was on the verge of causing Tony to pass out. "Trail went cold about a thousand miles out, but it's headed north and it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it. Again."

"The genie's out of that bottle," Natasha chuckles dryly. "Clearly the present is Ultron."

"I don't understand," Helen finally chimes in, turning away from one Ultron's old body she had been examining. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"

Tony starts to laugh, causing Bruce to shoot him a warning look and Brielle to shake her head 'no'.

"You think this is funny?" Thor demands.

"Five dollars says he strangles him again," Celeste whispers, causing Clint to snort.

"My five says Steve will lecture him first," Natasha bargains.

"No, it's probably not, right? Is this very terrible? Is it so-" Tony laughs, ignoring the stern looks he's receiving. "It is, it's so terrible."

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

"I'm sorry," Tony apologizes, walking closer to Thor as his laugh is replaced by an equally hostile tone. "I'm sorry, it is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

"Tony," Bruce calls out worriedly, the only one making an effort to diffuse the tension. "Maybe this might not be the time-"

"Really?" Tony asks incredulously, turning to face him. "That's it? You just roll over, show your belly every time somebody snarls?"

"Only when I've created a murderbot."

"We didn't!" Tony argues indignantly. "We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"

Bruce purses his lips, hesitating briefly before nodding his head with a shrug of a shoulder.

"Well you did something right, and you did it right here," Steve speaks up, gesturing vaguely around the lab. "The Avengers were supposed to be different than S.H.I.E.L.D."

"I don't see how that can happen when you all seem to trust each other with secrets about as much as S.H.I.E.L.D trusted the Avengers with them," Brielle observes.

"I really don't think you should be the one to lecture us about secrets," Steve retorts.

Brielle bristles, quickly occupying her hands with a tablet instead of arguing. Tony, on the other hand, grows even more agitated by his remark to Brielle.

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

"No," Rhodey plays along sarcastically. "It's never come up."

"Saved New York?"

"Never heard that."

"Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space," he continues his ramble, now pacing around the room. "We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can burst arms all through the livelong day. But that up there?" Tony points up, the slightest tremor in his hand as his voice softens. "That's the end game. How are you guys planning on beating that?"

"Together," Steve answers.

"We'll lose."

"We'll do that together too," he says, pausing for the briefest of moments. "Thor's right. Ultron is 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."

Celeste groans, fishing Clint's wallet out of his front pocket before he can notice and handing five dollars over to Natasha.