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"All our work is gone."

Bruce had the first word after the group returned back to the lab, where they could find an easier answer on what went wrong with this so called program 'Ultron', and to check how far it had gone. It didn't take long before Bruce cracked and confessed how he and Tony were secretly programming Ultron for the last couple days with the help of the scepter.

"Ultron cleared out. He used the Internet as an escape hatch," he continued.

"Ultron."

"He's been in everything," Natasha announced, crossing her arms in her chest. She'd changed out of her dress and was now in more flexible clothes. "Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other."

From the corner of her eye, (Y/N) saw how Clint tensed from his spot, and he had a reason to be. Clearly he had the most on risk out of everyone in the room, and she looked up to catch his eye and gave him a reassuring smile. She could worry about what this meant for her later; the full thought of her personal information in the hands of an unknown AI was creepy and brought chills down her spine.

"He's in your files, he's in the Internet," Rhodey spoke up, walking around the room. "What if he decided to access something a little more exciting?"

Maria snapped her head up. "Nuclear codes."

"Nuclear codes," Rhodey agreed. His eyes trailed on the team scattered all over the area. "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" Natasha questioned, shaking her head. "He said he wanted us dead."

"He didn't say 'dead'," Steve raised his voice from across the lab, hand on hip. "He said 'extinct'."

Clint leaned onto the railing from the upper half of the lab. "He also said he killed somebody."

"There wasn't anyone else in the building."

Tony walked toward the center of the room, holding a small see-through device in his hand. "Yes, there was."

He pressed the device and a hologram appeared on the center of the room that was designed for that. It revealed some sort of distorted image of the planet, with scattered pieces as if it was broken all around it. Bruce, who instantly recognized what it was, moved closer with his hands open and glasses on to examínate it further.

"What?" he voiced his questions. "This is insane."

"JARVIS was the first line of defense," Steve realized, crossing his arms. "He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense."

"No," Bruce interrupted before he corrected the theory. "Ultron could have assimilated JARVIS. This isn't strategy. This is rage."

Before anyone else could voice any other thoughts, loud thumping steps caught (Y/N)'s attention and recognized the upcoming figure. Thor had finally returned after trying to find out where one of Ultron's controlled robots had gone with the scepter, and he was empty handed. This couldn't mean any good.

Instead of speaking, he immediately marched up to Tony and grabbed him by the throat, raising him in the air while doing so.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

"It's going around."

"Come on, use your words, buddy," Tony strained, still being held up in the air.

Thor looked far away from amused. "I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark."

"Focus, Thor," (Y/N) called his attention, taking one step further. "The Legionnaire."

Thor knew better and let Tony down on the ground, not too harshly but not that slow. The poor man staggered to regain his posture but he managed to move away from the god.

The anger hadn't faded away. "Trail went cold about 100 miles out, but it's headed north. And it has the scepter." He looked amongst the teammates. "Now we have to retrieve it, again."

"Genie's out of that bottle," Natasha told him. "Clear and present is Ultron."

"I don't understand," Dr. Helen Cho's voice caught everyone's attention. This was the first time she'd spoken after the entire fiasco. She was staring down at the remaining parts of one robot. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"

A snort escaped out of Tony's mouth before anyone could say something else. (Y/N) frowned at him, thinking how could he laugh when there was a serious problem in hand. Bruce, who was the closest to him, shook his head in silence as he tried to tell him to stop. Tony obviously didn't care and his laughter only grew louder.

"You think this is funny?" Thor asked him.

"No," Tony defended. "It's probably not, right? This is really terrible. Is it so. . ." he let out a laugh. "It is so. . .It is. It's so terrible."

"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand."

"No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny," Tony walked up to the much taller man. "It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

"Tony, maybe this might not be the time," Bruce tried to calm things down.

"Really? That's it?" Tony whirled to look at him. "You just roll over, show your belly every time somebody snarls?"

"Only when I've created a murder bot."

"We didn't. We weren't even close," he argued. "Where we close to an interface?"

"Well, you did something right. And you did it right here," Steve announced in a strict voice, arms crossed before he walked up to Tony. "The Avengers are supposed to be different than S.H.I.E.L.D."

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

"No, it's never come up."

"Saved New York?"

"Never heard that."

"Recall that?" Tony yelled out. "A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing 300 feet below it."

(Y/N) blinked and she could still freshly remember the sound noise of the Chitauri army as they charged through New York, and the sight she saw when she pulled Tony out of the wormhole haunted her every night.

"We're the Avengers. We can bust arm dealers all the livelong day, but that up there. . ." He paused, pointing over at the roof above him.

"That's the endgame."

The hairs on the back of (Y/N)'s neck stood up, and she tried not to focus on the solemn look Tony had when he finished his words. It seemed like this was something that haunted him just as much as it did her, but now it was much more noticiable. It was as if he was terrified.

"How are you guys planning on beating that?"

Steve locked eyes with him. "Together."

"We'll lose."

"Then we'll do that together too."

Steve looked away from him before continuing his speech, moving over to lean on a table. "Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And If like to find him before he's ready for us."

(Y/N) was still focusing on the words that were coming out of Steve's mouth, but it was a difficult task when she was also playing attention on how Tony looked off. She knew how to read him —hell, she lived with him for months — and she knew the look went nothing good. She just wasn't sure how to approach it, since things weren't the same as they were before.

"The world's a big place," the captain continued. "Let's start making it smaller."

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The next morning came in a flash. It wasn't easy to fall asleep with something this big hanging in her head, but (Y/N) knew it was necessary. Once she was well rested, Maria joined her in the elevator and then insisted on Steve coming with them, since she had a new report on Ultron's whereabouts.

It was of normal occurrence for this to happen. Steve was a captain, just like one of an army, and something the team needed. (Y/N) was always the second in command to a captain, used to being the helping hand and she was okay with her role. So, it made sense that the reports of missions, new information, or briefings went to them, since they were the most prepared.

"He's all over the globe," Maria explained once the elevator doors opened and they all walked out, touring over the room that had been destroyed last night. "Robotics labs, weapons facilites, jet propulsion labs. Reports of a metal man, or men, coming in and emptying the place."

They climbed up the set of stairs when Steve asked, "Fatalities?"

"Only when engaged," Maria informed, her heels clicking on the floor. "Mostly guys left in a fugue state going on about old memories, worst fears, and 'something too fast to see'."

"The Maximoffs," (Y/N) stated, her head clicking.

She'd read about them after attacking the last base. They were twins that were experimented on, natives of Sokovia. When (Y/N) read how tragic their childhoods had been, she couldn't help but feel a tiny bit of empathy.

"That makes sense he'd go to them," Steve broke her out of her thoughts. "They have someone in common."

"Not anymore."

Maria passed on her tablet and showed it to Steve, while (Y/N) took a glance over her shoulder to see for herself and her breath hitched. The image on the screen showed Baron Von Strucker laying in a bed and the word 'Peace' written in blood on the wall. It didn't take a genius to know that was his blood, and that Ultron had been the one to do it.

Steve and (Y/N) left Maria to find the others, and barely got more than three steps before Clint's voice was heard mumbling incoherent sentences under his breath, as if he was talking to someone. He was leaning on the wall while having his phone pressed to his ear, and (Y/N) knew who this was.

"Barton," Steve called him. "Might have something."

"I gotta go," Clint muttered over the phone before hanging up.

"Who was that?" (Y/N) innocently asked, even though she already knew the answer.

Clint gave her a look. "Girlfriend."

They were now all gathered inside the lab, which was dimly lit and quiet due to no one else being around. Natasha was sat in one stool over a computer, while the rest gathered around her. Steve still had the tablet in his hands and Thor couldn't help but question it.

"What's that?"

"A message," Steve replied. "Ultron killed Strucker."

Thor slammed the tablet into Tony's stomach when he heard him get closer, and the latter grabbed it out of his hands with a frowning look before turning it up to see the image.

"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us," Tony sarcastically said as Bruce peeked over his shoulder to check it out.

"This is a smoke screen," Natasha added. "Why send a message when you've just given a speech?"

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss."

"Yeah, I bet he — Yeah," Natasha paused her words after she'd typed into the computer. The screen popped a red flashing color, and that wasn't good. "Everything we had on Strucker's been erased."

"Not everything."

They tried to look for information in the old-fashioned way. Through paperwork, written files and photographs. Anything that could lead them further and give them the advantage that they'd lost because of their fallen database. Everyone was focused on a different box, some had to be dusted and cleaned out because of how old they were. The boxes were made of cardboard, so they had folded sides and marks that told how long they'd been kept in.

(Y/N) grabbed two boxes and carefully and placed them in a table, dodging out of the way when Thor desperately threw the lid off a box without carrying who could he hit with it.

"Known associates," Steve listed out, grabbing a file. "Baron Strucker had a lot of friends."

Bruce read on a paper in concentration. "Well, these people are all horrible."

"Wait," Tony called his attention, eyes falling into something in Bruce's hands. "I know that guy."

He reached out to grab the file out of Bruce's hands and folded it open so he could read on it properly. There we're at least 10 pages included over who he was talking about, and part of that bunch were pictures.

"From back in the day. He operates off the African coast," he grabbed a photo. "Black market arms."

Tony looked up to defend himself when he received two different looks from two people. One was from Steve, out of pure anger, and the other was from (Y/N), who looked utterly disappointed. "There are conventions. All right? You meet people. I didn't sell him anything."

Tony frowned in memory. "He was talking about finding something new, a game-changer. It was all very Ahab."

(Y/N) saw how Thor held out the picture and read out the name 'Ulysses Klaue' in the photo. Three different angles of the same man, and she noticed the strange mark on his neck.

Thor noticed it too. "This?"

"Ah, it's a tattoo, I don't think he had it."

(Y/N) carefully took a step forward to inspect the pictures and noticed the slight change of color in the different marks on his body. Ones were black, like tattoos, and the one that Thor was pointing out was not.

"That doesn't look like a tattoo," she pointed out. "That is a brand."

Bruce moved over to the computer to check it every further, scanning the picture and trying to find anything similar to it. He found a match in at least five seconds, and he leaned back on his chair to call their attention.

"Oh, yeah. It's a word in an African dialect meaning 'thief'," he read out. "In a much less friendly way."

"What dialect?"

"Wakanada," Bruce mispronounced. "W-Wakanda."

There was a shared look of realization between Tony and Steve, who were questioning the same thing at once. (Y/N) couldn't help but frown.

"If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods — "

"I thought your father said he got the last of it."

"I don't follow," Bruce got up with raised eyebrows. "What comes out of Wakanda?"

Eyes fell on Steve's shield leaning on the wall. Tony was the one to reply to their doubts with a stoic expression. "The strongest metal on Earth."

"Where is this guy now?"