The laughter from the team was cut off by a gut-wrenching noise. A screech ripped through their ears, and everyone's hands flew up to cover them. Sue felt her already swimming stomach lurch, and her aching head was hit as if with Thor's hammer. Her teeth clenched together, and a ringing was left as the noise faded.

'Worthy? No, how could you be worthy?' A voice sounded from behind them. 'You're all killers.'

Sue looked over her shoulder and saw one of Tony's suits half dismantled. Wires were exposed and sparks flew from the scraping of its limp leg against the floor. An arm was missing and the hand on the present one was nothing but a stump at the wrist. But lights shone through the eyeholes, showing that it was powered and conscious.

'Stark?' Steve called out; his eyes trained on the thing that hobbled into the room.

'JARVIS?' Tony said and pulled out his handheld monitor of the AI.

'I'm sorry... I was asleep,' the jumble of Iron Man parts spoke with its hand (wrist) against its head. 'Or... I was a dream?'

The team stood from their places in the living room and watched in confusion. The suit talked and moved as if it were human, looking around the room and even eyeing each of its inhabitants. Its wires swung as its parts moved, and the voice hummed from within. Sue sobered up at the sight and stood barefoot on the tiles, slipping into the space between Clint and Steve. Although her head ached and her vision blurred in the corners from the alcohol, the sight of the robot was enough to feel frightened and uneasy.

'Reboot, Legionnaire OS, we got a buggy suit,' Tony tapped at his device, confused about the technical issue. JARVIS was always quick to respond to his commands, yet he was silent and uncooperative.

'There was a terrible noise... and I was tangled in... in... strings. I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy,' the suit looked down, as if shamed by his actions.

'You killed someone?' Steve questioned.

'Wouldn't have been my first call. But, down in the real world we're faced with ugly choices,' the suit looked at the group. Sue hated the moment its eyes settled on her. As it moved over to Clint, she felt like she had been looked through. As if it knew everything about her and wouldn't need to ask who she was or what she was capable of.

'Who sent you?' Thor boomed, his hammer tight in his fist.

'I see a suit of armour around the world,' Tony's recorded voice rang out from the suit, and everyone's heads turned to him. He looked up from his handheld device and pinched his eyebrows together, his lips parted.

'Ultron,' Bruce gasped. The group's attention went back to the suit, but Sue's eyes stayed on Tony.

Ultron was a touchy subject between her and her boyfriend. When it was first mentioned, Tony enthusiastically explained it to Sue, like a child would to his mother. His idea of having a safe world would need something that would require monumental power on a technological scale. His babblings of AI and putting their trust into something inhuman, was shot down by Sue almost immediately. She knew that Tony had a habit of not knowing the line between saving the world and putting it in danger. Ever since then, Tony made sure to not mention Ultron to her again.

But as always, he had done what he wanted, because he was Tony Stark.

'In the flesh. Or, no, not yet. Not this... chrysalis,' the suit with Ultron in it said. 'But I'm ready. I'm on a mission.'

'What mission?' Natasha tried.

'Peace in our time.'

Ultron watched as the Iron Legion shot through the walls behind him. The Avengers didn't have time to prepare as Iron Man suits operated under Ultron's orders, attacking each of them with the intent to kill. Everyone besides Thor was without their weapons, so most of the team had to use their instincts and combat skills.

Luckily, Sue and Johnny were able to use their abilities to help the others. A suit flew towards Maria Hill but was hit with a fireball sent by Johnny. His arms were engulfed with his flames, and he sent the suit into a wall, its middle burnt and wafted with smoke. It attempted to stand and held up a repulsor to fire, but Johnny ran forward and ripped its head off, his flaming hands melting the metal to a puddle of thick titanium-alloy.

As the Avengers were occupied with fighting the suits, one moved towards Loki's scepter that sat on a stand. It took it into its hands and flew off, unseen and successful.

Tony stabbed a cocktail fork into the neck of one of his suits. The helmet jerked from the malfunction and crumbled at Tony's feet. Since he made the suits, he was able to dismantle them by attacking their weakspots.

'We are here to help! We are here to help!' the automated voice continued. Tony turned as a suit dropped down behind him, holding up its repulsor to fire. His face lit up from the powering light and he swallowed, unable to call on his own suit quick enough. Before it could fire, the suit's chest expanded from the inside and its voice continued,

'It's unsafe! It's unsafe!'

The suit exploded, its pieces flying around the room and leaving the last of the forcefield to diminish into the air. Tony's shoulders sagged in relief when he saw Sue with her hand up, the forcefield obviously from her doing. Her green dress trailed behind her, and Tony hitched the side of his lips up in a smirk.

'Thanks for saving my ass, Kermit,' Tony joked, but Sue's face stayed as still as stone.

'Ultron was something we agreed was a no-go,' Sue's tone was harsh, and Tony let out a groan.

'Honey, this isn't the best time.'

'Oh, I'm sorry, the past three days would've been a great opportunity to tell me. But you spent them ignoring me.'

Tony went to retort a snarky remark, when a suit fired a shot that skimmed past his shoulder. Sue materialised a disk of electric blue and spun it across the room, the suit's neck slicing open. Its body disassembled as it hit the floor and the disk planted itself into the wood of the wall. As the blue faded, a slit was left behind the helmet that crashed to floor. Clint threw Steve his shield that was stored away up until now, and the man sliced it through the last suit that was sent with the attack.

'That was dramatic!' Ultron's voice brought their attention back to him. '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?'

The being picked up the torso of a suit that was dismembered and held it up to look at it's twitching shoulders.

'With these? These puppets?' he reduced its head to a ball of metal. 'There's only one path to peace: The Avengers' extinction.'

Thor's hammer flew through Ultron's body as the demi-god let out a cry. With his body dismantled but his consciousness still running rouge, Ultron's voice continued to sound as it travelled to another host.

'I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me, no strings on me...'

---

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

The Avengers gathered in the lab after the incident. Still dressed in their party gear, they watched as Bruce and Tony looked through their computers. Ultron had gone through everyone's information and learnt anything that he wanted to know about the world. There wasn't one thing about their past that he didn't know. It made them feel like zoo animals and Ultron was the human that taunted them with his face pressed through the iron bars.

'Ultron,' Steve repeated the foreign name.

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

'He's in your files, he's in the internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?' Rhodey put his hands up and looked between the team of supers.

'Nuclear codes,' Maria finished.

'Nuclear codes,' he confirmed. 'Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can.'

'A robot just tried to kill us, and you're worried about nuclear codes?' Johnny scoffed, the sleeves of his denim jacket burnt and singed from using his powers. 'That's too American.'

'He said he wanted us dead,' Sue thought aloud. 'Doesn't sound like he's interested in something like nuclear warfare.'

'He didn't say dead. He said extinct.'

'He also said he killed somebody,' Clint finished for Steve.

'But there wasn't anyone else in the building,' Maria said.

'Yes, there was.'

Tony pressed the device in his hand and brought up the 3D image of JARVIS's consciousness. The once functioning sphere that fired electrons and worked like a brain, was destroyed and pulled a part. Like Tony, Sue was devastated to see JARVIS murdered. He was just a computer system, but he had been with them for years, powering suits and helping with battles they never would have won without him.

Sue held her hand to her lips and picked at the peeling skin. Still in her green dress and her blonde hair wrapped in a low bun, she began to feel the chill of the autumn night. Without JARVIS, the central heating system didn't power the tower like it constantly did. The tower was left bare without him.

'This is insane...' Bruce put his hand on his forehead.

'JARVIS was the first line of defence,' Steve said. 'He would've shut Ultron down. It makes sense.'

'No, Ultron could've assimilated JARVIS. This isn't strategy, this is...rage,' Bruce explained and pointed at the system that was once JARVIS.

The door to the lab swung open and Thor, clad in his silver suit and red cape, headed for Tony. The team watched as Thor's large hand clamped around Tony's neck and lifted his feet off the floor, the Stark letting out a choked sound. Thor's face was full of fury and his hammer was held at the ready in his other hand.

'Thor!' Sue cried. No matter how angry she was at Tony, Thor's action was uncalled for.

'Come on. Use your words, buddy,' Tony choked out, his voice strained from his compromised windpipe. He put his own hands against the demi-god's in attempt to pry them off, but knew he was no physical match.

'I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark,' Thor seethed.