CHAPTER SEVEN: "IT'S WHAT WE DO"

"All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out. He used the Internet as an escape hatch." Bruce explained softly as everyone was in the lab discussing Ultron. Olive felt out of place, but Steve somehow convinced her to stay. He had also mentioned that he needed to talk to her afterwards.

"Ultron." Steve mumbled softly. He looked tired. They were all tired, after a fun night of partying that quickly turned into a fight against robots, they were exhausted.

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

"He's in your files, he's in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting." Rhodey said, taking a few steps forwards.

"Nuclear codes." Maria spoke up while she removed the glass from her foot that she had stepped on during the fight. Olive grimaced at the sight, knowing she would not be handling it as well as Maria was if they switched places.

"Nuclear codes." Rhodey repeated in disbelief. "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can." He finished.

"Nukes? He said he wanted us dead." Natasha frowned, her head tilting slightly.

"He didn't say 'dead', he said 'extinct'." Steve corrected. Olive hummed softly at Ultron's strange choice of words.

"He also said he killed somebody." Clint added, walking forwards to get closer to the group. Olive hated all of this. It was stressing her out too much and she was worried that if she stayed any longer that she would crack under the pressure and let all hell break loose. She wanted to go home-but she had no home to go back to. That was left behind years ago, in a series of tragic events that the Maximoff would rather block from her memory.

"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Maria thought out loud, wincing as she removed a piece of glass from her foot.

"JARVIS." Olive realized, her voice a whisper as she looked up at Tony with wide eyes. She had grown to like the AI during her time here. Ten days is a long time to get familiar with an AI, she supposed.

"Yes, there was." Tony sighed, walking forward as he flicked his phone to show a destroyed, orange ball that represented JARVIS.

"What?" Bruce mumbled, walking around the hologram. "This is insane." He said in utter disbelief.

"JARVIS was the first line of defence. He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense." Steve sighed, looking down, his arms crossed over his chest.

"No. Ultron could have assimilated JARVIS." Bruce shook his head, staring at the destroyed hologram, still in shock. "This isn't strategy. This is... rage." He finished off. It was an emotion he knew well, coming to that conclusion was easy for him.

Just then, Thor stormed in, heading straight for Tony, his hammer in one hand. He grabbed Tony by the throat and lifted him in the air, cutting of his oxygen. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Steve said in alarm, quickly getting to his feet as he walked over to the men.

"It's going around." Clint mumbled referring to the 'rage' comment.

"Come on, use your words, buddy." Tony said in a strained voice. His eyes were wide as he gripped Thor's wrist, not even bothering to try and fight the god.

"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark." Thor seethed angrily, his eyes squinted into slits.

"Thor." Steve interrupted, his voice stern. "The Legionnaire." He walked towards the two. Thor aggressively put Tony down before sending him an glare.

"Trail went cold about 100 miles out, but it's headed north. And it has the sceptre." Thor huffed, still tense as he looked to Steve. "Now we have to retrieve it," he glanced at Tony, "again."

"The genies out of that bottle." Natasha sighed, "clear and present is Ultron."

Olive just watched the scene unfold, leaning against a desk as she focused more on the brighter side of things. Literally. "I don't understand." Helen suddenly spoke up from across the room, looking at the robot.

"Understand what?" Olive frowned.

"Tony, you built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?" The woman looked towards the billionaire.

Olive, along with everyone else, watched in confusion as Tony started chuckling. Bruce shook his head at Tony to stop, but the man did anything but. "You think this is funny?" Thor asked, a fake smile evident on his face. There was a dangerous light dancing in his eyes.

"No. It's probably not, right? This is very terrible. Is it so... it is. It's so terrible." He laughed even louder.

"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand." Thor said angrily, and it took everything in him to not to strangle Tony once more.

Tony didn't care as he started to talk over him. "No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this." Tony tone was even, the humour in his voice had vanished.

"Tony, maybe this might not be the right time." Bruce cut in as he shook his head, his face scrunched up.

"Really? That's it?" Tony started, turning around to face Bruce. "You just roll over, show your belly every time somebody snarls?" He held his chin up high.

"Only when I've created a murder bot." Bruce said in a mocking tone. Olive raised her brows, it was definitely the most sass that she's heard from the man.

"We didn't. We weren't even close." Tony denied, refusing to believe what Bruce was telling him. "Were we close to an interface?" Tony asked around as Bruce nodded his head 'yes'.

"Well, you did something right. And you did it right here." Steve slowly walked forwards with his arms crossed. "The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD." He reasoned.

"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a worm while?" Tony said out of the blue.

Olive frowned at the change of topic, furrowing her brows, "no." She literally had no idea. Being stuck in Hydra all that time, she wasn't allowed to see the outside world. Thor looked over to her with an amused look on his face.

"No, it's never come up." Rhodey mumbled sarcastically while shrugging.

"Saved New York?"

"Never heard that."

"Recall that?" Tony ignored the man's comments as he continued on. "A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We were standing 300 feet below it." Tony continued, his voice began to grow softer. "We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the lifelong day, but that up there, that's... that's the endgame." Tony sighed softly, looking around. "How were you guys planning on beating that?" He finished. Olive noticed that the room was much less tense now, which sent a wave of relief through her.

"Together." Steve said softly, a genuine look on his face as he looked over to someone that he was proud to call a friend.

Tony walked forward and looked him dead in the eyes. "We'll lose." He stopped, leaving a distance between the two.

"Then we'll do that together, too." Steve said confidently. Olive admired him for his bravery and confidence, she really did. "Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The worlds a big place. Let's start making it smaller." Steve finished off, and with that, everyone started to leave the room.

"Are you okay?"

Olive looked up at the sudden voice, and noticed Steve standing there. She sighed, "oh, right. You wanted to talk."

Steve nodded as he leaned against the desk that she was leaning on. "I did." He nodded, "so are you? If you don't mind me asking. After the party, you kinda-"

"Lost control?" Olive interrupted, causing the man to sigh and nod. "Yeah. But, Steve, I swear if you have any questions about my powers I am not in the mood to answer them. I think Bruce wrote some stuff down earlier so just ask him." She laughed softly. Spending a good ten minutes to explain what she could do was not on her schedule.

Steve chuckled softly, "all right. I will." He sounded genuine, which caused Olive to smile. She didn't think he cared enough to read up on it. "We'll help you figure this out. It's what we do."

The statement caused Olive to pause. Ever since she was young, she had been told to hate the Avengers. Everything they did, and everything they would do, no matter how good it was, it was never supposed to be good enough for her.

But here she was, standing next to the Captain himself, talking to him about how the Avengers were willing to help her. "Thank you, Steve." She smiled at him. His words meant more than he could ever know.

It felt nice to have a mind of her own. Her siblings weren't hovering over her shoulders to make every decision for her. She didn't have Strucker breathing down her neck. It was all her. And it felt good.

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lizzie speaks...

editing this fic is so hard, i used to just do all the paragraphs like:
''hello.' tony said. 'oh, hi' bruce said'
UM- it was so... plain. ew no okay moving on