∆ {3²³} {FIRST, YOU SURVIVE} ∆

THAT MOMENT OF tranquillity didn't last long. While she no longer fought because she needed to, she was fighting because she had hope that they could win. As soon as the first airborne lifeboat positioned itself at the side of the new island, Roxi tore herself away from the view, spinning around and running in the opposite direction of the crowds to try and help marshal people and pick up or help any stragglers. It was a kind of awfully controlled chaos, with the people stampeding as orderly as possible towards their safe asylum. She could hear their terrified yells, though just barely over the noise their feet made against the floating rock. As she moved between them, weaving through their jostling bodies as she tried to get to the edge so she could move more quickly, she felt oddly isolated, which was most definitely unusual, especially with the pure amount of people that made no move to flow past her easily. She collided with someone every few steps, and by the time in the edge of the crowd, guilt was beginning to inflate like a balloon in her stomach. If only they could've got these people out earlier. She was strangely glad that she was feeling the self-condemnation.

Within the seething mass of bodies, she barely felt human. Their terror had been so raw that it seemed to have made the air ten times thicker and to have made it almost impossible for Roxi to move through quickly. And yet, all she felt was fear. She wasn't screaming, running for her life like a normal person would. Her fear didn't go much further than some horrible nerves, and that - to her, at least - wasn't natural. She didn't feel like a person here, surrounded by so many boiling, twisting emotions while she remained almost inappropriately calm. She'd dealt with fear before. Pure, raw, terror. Well, she hadn't felt that in years, and she wasn't planning on starting now.

It took her a moment to process that for now, while they were fighting a psychopathic (if you could even attribute a hunk of Vibranium and wiring that label) AI in a body made out of the strongest metal on Earth, that feeling was a disadvantage. She needed to be thankful that her demons weren't screaming at her to run, to cower in safety. She needed to fight, for herself, for her team, for these people. First, she would survive, then she would get her humanity back.

"You think you're saving anyone?" Ultron's whirring, chillingly smooth voice slid through the comms in Roxi's ears just as she helped up a woman who had tripped over something, though the Sokovian pushed away from her quickly and continued whatever path she had been taking to try and get to the lifeboats. Roxi stared at her back for a second, feeling suddenly thankful that she had grown up the way she did. At least now she didn't have to experience dread like these people were feeling.

"I turn that key and drop this rock a little early, and it's still billions dead," Ultron threatened as Roxi tore her eyes away from the mass of people, making her way further into the heart of the city. She needed to get them out. It was her job.

"Thor, I got a plan!" Tony reported urgently a minute or so later, in which time Roxi had run a few blocks and helped a dark-skinned out from under a block of rubble. They hadn't, somehow, been injured badly. It would bruise nastily, but the boy would be all right.

"We're out of time, they're coming for the core," Thor replied as she stopped to catch her breath, her chest aching at the speed she had run. She took the time to turn around and take out whatever robot she saw in the sky. There weren't many, but the ones who did were crushed into hundreds of small shards that would've been no bigger than a ring pull. In all honesty, Roxi was glad that she had been given the opportunity to release her pent-up power on something that wouldn't harm her teammates. Not directly, and hopefully not in another way. The conversation where Tony had found her file and she'd snapped seemed so long ago now, even though it had only been days. She'd threatened him because her anger was brewing inside her, and now, she could wreak havoc on these robots because she was saving the world while she did it. It seemed that violence, war, battles; they were the best way for her to let out her emotions without anyone getting hurt. Anyone innocent or on their side at least. But she hadn't been fully in control against HYDRA, and these robots were simply shaped blocks of metal with coding flowing through their wires instead of blood running through their veins. So Roxi felt no remorse as she scrapped another robot, sending yet another into wall and impaling it on a piece of exposed rebar, leaving it to dangle gormlessly in the air that seemed to be getting colder by the second.

"Rhodey, get the rest of the people on board that carrier. Avengers, it's time to work for a living," Tony announced dramatically as Roxi let out a steady breath, seeing her area clear of robots. He flew over her head a second later, his thrusters roaring as he streaked towards the church, with Roxi following suit quickly. She'd rather not be left out of the looming fight. She needed to do her part. Something about how irrationally she'd been acting around most of the team lately made her feel as if she had more of an obligation than anyone else to insure this went well. Natasha had been the only one who she could really talk to recently, who she knew she wouldn't hurt no matter what. It was good. It gave her an anchor, something to hold onto when she did need her humanity back. The church came into sight as the last thought entered her mind, but she washed it away on a wave of emotion from the ocean that sat dormant in her mind. Now that she had started working out the build-up, the pressure of what she felt inside her mind, it was far easier to control. Survive now, humanity later.

She arrived seconds after Pietro, having set out far earlier as he stayed further towards the edge of the island to help people there, exchanging a nod with Tony to recognise her arrival. Steve burst in a seconds later, pinning down a robot that Roxi, once again, turned into deadly dust. Steve looked slightly surprised as he hit the ground after falling a slight difference, looking up to catch Roxi's eye and thank her, though he didn't manage to because of the way she would twist every few seconds to disintegrate another robot. Clint and Wanda wandered in surprisingly slowly for what was going on, though Roxi didn't have enough time to greet them because a blast was sent towards her face. She ducked beneath it, though only just, and she knew that well because she had felt the heat of it searing the air above her head as it passed.

"Romanoff, I wouldn't keep Ryder waiting; she's already powdering stuff," Tony warned, ignoring the deadly glare that Roxi sent him, and the slightly nervous feeling he got when her icy eyes met his. She was most definitely intimidating, and as she fought, she held up the idea of power well.

"Relax, tin-man. Not all of us can fly." Natasha replied coolly, clearly taking the joke much better than her counterpart had. In Roxi's opinion, now wasn't the time for jokes. She needed to keep her focus because she held power over Ultron and his robots that no-one else quite held - at least in their physical form. Natasha ran into the room of the church they all fought in only seconds later, though Roxi didn't realise she was there until she spoke.

"What's the drill?"

"This. This is the drill. If Ultron gets a hand on the core, we lose," Tony informed Natasha as Roxi found herself running out of robots to scrap. The Hulk stormed into the room seconds later, drawing almost everyone's attention as she slammed the last robot in front of her into a crumbling wall, boulders of rubble rolling down onto its sparking body. Out of the corner of her eye, Roxi saw another metallic figure rise into the air through one of the dirty white arches that supported the room that the ten of them stood in. It was Ultron. She could tell by the size and by the way he simply hovered in the air, holding an aura of power that one of his dummy bots would never be able to.

"Is that the best you can do?" Thor's challenge was loud, and he waved him hammer in one hand as he made it, staring straight at Ultron as Roxi subconsciously checked the environment around them and herself for injuries. It wouldn't do anyone any good if she was bleeding out during this final confrontation. But, for once, she seemed to have escaped with only minor injuries such as scrapes and bruises. Maybe, for once, she would make it through a battle without sustaining a serious injury. Ultron raised a hand, a movement that Roxi could only just make out from the distance between he and the Avengers. However, she didn't need to squint to make out what it was that Ultron had done, because thousands of Ultron's dummy bots swarmed into the area near him, crawling like ants over the rubble, some joining him in the air. It was a distasteful sight, and the way that the sun glinted off of their bodies made it seem as if they were all one, writhing mass. One simple enemy to defeat; they were all Ultron. If they took him out, they won. He'd already been burnt out from the internet, courtesy of Vision, so all they had to do was destroy every single one of the robots he had built, and this would be over. Roxi wasn't new to conflict. She knew it wasn't going to be easy, but she also knew that if she gave up before she'd had the chance to fight, then there was no way that they would come out of this on top.

"You had to ask," Steve sighed out, heavy breaths spreading through the air. It would've been eerily silent, but the world was instead filled with the constant roar of whatever was keeping them going up, mixed with the mechanical whirs that echoed from where Ultron's army were lurking. 

"This is the best I can do," Ultron drawled out, and his voice might've sent an uncomfortable chill racing down Roxi's spine like it had the first time he'd presented himself to them, but she was used to it now. She was used to the idea that an AI Tony and Bruce had tried to create was now set on their extinction. She was used to the thought that she was thousands of feet up in the air on a chunk of rock that carried half of the city of Sokovia and that she could tear the strongest metal on earth into pieces. Of course, she didn't have to use her powers in such a violent way, and it was probably better not to. She probably should've been saving her energy, but the emotions inside of her didn't want to stay down any longer, and Roxi knew she would have to get whatever was left out quickly.

"This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me; how can you possibly hope to stop me?"

"Well, like the old man said," Tony started, his voice surprisingly soft as she turned his head to look at Steve, "together." His words joined the fray in the air for a second, and everything else seemed to quieten, as if listening to the sentiment that both Tony and Steve seemed determined to use. The Hulk let out a bellow, dragging Roxi from the moment where pride and solidarity had swelled inside of her, and apparently, Ultron's robots took it as a war cry (which it had probably been) and began to march forwards, their unnaturally lithe forms glistening like a deadly river with their movements. Roxi drew in a deep breath as she surveyed the scene in front of her. The silver river had surged into a wave of pure metal and circuiting, and it was advancing over the boulder-strewn ground swiftly, as if it was devouring everything that lay in its path.

"Hold onto your weapons," Roxi called out, having made a decision about how she was going to deal with this. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, raising her hands to help her find what she was looking for. She couldn't tell if her team had listened to her, but she hoped they had, because a moment later, she released her own shockwave of power. It ripped through the air around her, expanding quickly in a circular motion, and as soon as it hit the first robot, she could feel it. She had tried to filter it down to the metal the robots were made of, which held an almost energetic hum, likely due to the circuitry they had in place of blood, as she always did, but the was the force hit the robot, was different. It wasn't controlled as Roxi had made it before, instead, it was a surge of pure, raw power that had exploded out of her the moment she'd had the thought. When it claimed its first casualty, it was almost as if her stamina, her determination to keep the shockwave going had taken a physical hit. Against her better judgement, Roxi allowed herself to wince at the contact, knowing that she couldn't focus on supressing emotions with what she was doing. She had to keep going. Even as she stopped flinching every time a robot fell to the ground, torn in half, her face set into a grimace, and she opened her eyes to see what was left of Ultron's army, though no further than a squint.

It was only when the shockwave reached a veritable wall of robots that she found herself faltering. It was beginning to hurt to keep her power as it was, expanding outwards hungrily. She allowed her eyes to sweep across Ultron's army one more time before she lowered her arms, feeling her powers rush back into her body as if she'd thrust them out of her, and she took a slight step back, transferring most of her weight onto that leg as she let out a long, laboured breath, and opened her eyes properly. She didn't need to look around at her team to know that they were either staring at her, or damage she had wreaked on the robots. All she could do now was hope that she wouldn't need the power she had expended for anything else, and hope that the battle was over soon.

{A/N:} Um, hey guys. Really sorry I missed the update last week, I was looking at GCSE options and then got kinda caught up in other stuff. If any of you see the 100 reference that's in here, I didn't actually mean to put it in but realised I did when I was skim-reading it. Also I kinda just came up wit hit and liked it, so I went along with it. I wanted to show what Roxi can really do and how much she's been bottling up. Oh yeah, thank you guys for 3K votes (last Saturday) and 70K reads :)

Anyway, this is out much earlier than unusual, and I hope you enjoy it.

Please, vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,

2700 Words

Written: 27 / 02 / 2021

Published: 27 / 02 / 2021