∆ {3²¹} {PUZZLE PIECES} ∆

IT WASN'T LONG after that that everything went to hell.

Tony had arrived in the church in the middle of the city where Ultron had arranged the first meeting with Wanda and Pietro, where he had met up with the psychopathic tin-can that he had created. Roxi hadn't heard whatever the two of them had said, but it was undoubtedly nothing good, because the ground quite literally began cracking beneath Roxi's feet. She  took hasty steps back just in time to avoid the cold, metallic hand of one of Ultron's dummy bots as it burst through the floor.  She acted completely out of instinct,  ripping it out from underneath the cobbles with her powers, and crushing it with a simple flick of her wrist.

The appearance of the robots brought several people out of Wanda's stupor, resulting in a momentary confusion, and then, inevitably, the terrified clamour as people broke out of line and began to yell, to scream, and to leave the group that the Avengers had so carefully cultivated. Chaos fell quickly, with Roxi dealing with as many robots as she could while still being aware of the tide of Sokovian citizens that now swarmed around them. Car horns began to blare, mixed with their screams that hung so awfully in the cold air, a deep rumble sounding, shaking the ground beneath them as she watched a line form, the earth being ripped apart with such a brutal, cold force that it made Roxi want to shudder. It was if the city was warning them, letting them know what would come if they couldn't stop it, when the world would be consumed by an event so disastrous that it seemed to come from a story, from pure fiction. But it would be real; in their reality. They had to deal with it. Roxi had to deal with it before it got wildly out of hand. Ultron had laid out his plan like a perfect jigsaw ready to be put together, every piece in place, ready to be connected. And now, Ultron had started to do that, carefully slipping each puzzle piece into the exact slot that it belonged in.

The world around Roxi, went up. There was no other way to describe it: quite simply; up. The deathly grip that she had been holding on her quarterstaff faltered, as, for the first time since New York, Roxi froze. Her aversion to falling hadn't gotten any better, and if anything, her job had only hindered it. New York; when Tony had fallen, DC; when she had jumped out of an exploding building forty floors up with Sam next to her: now, she could add another situation to the list. It took far too long for her to break out of her haze, realising she had been standing stock-still for the last few minutes. Time she could've been using to save lives, to stop Ultron, to find Natasha. Even if she hadn't heard Tony's conversation before, she most certainly did now, hearing his harrowed voice through the comms.

"FRIDAY?" From what she had gathered in her brief amount of listening time on the Quinjet, Tony had replaced JARVIS with a new AI, now that his oldest one was compromised.

"Sokovia's going for a ride," the AI confirmed grimly, just in time for Ultron to start his grand speech, to explain his master plan to them, to let them see the finished product of that jigsaw that had been so painstakingly assembled.

"Do you see the beauty of it? The inevitability? You rise, only to fall. You; Avengers, you are my meteor, my swift and terrible sword, and the Earth will crack with the weight of your failure. Purge me from your computers, turn my own flesh against me; it means nothing. When the dust settles, the only thing left living in this world, will be metal." Their was something so oddly eerie, so terrifying about the last word in his announcement. It hadn't been particularly long, but it had done its job in filling the team with a certain type of hopelessness and fear. Roxi could feel cold dread running through her veins, mixing with the adrenaline in a fierce combination that was likely to get her killed. But Roxi had learned to something that a lot of people hadn't, and that was to use those negative feelings to her advantage, to allow them to fuel her fighting, to strengthen her resolve and stop any more from creeping in. 

"Cap, you've got incoming," at this point, she wasn't focusing at all on what might be happening to her teammates, instead focused on the situation at hand, which happened to be stopping the robots from attacking random civilians. Once they had realised that she could simply tear them out of the air and rip them in two, or by Ultron's command, she didn't know which, they began aiming for her more directly. Some of them had some for of blaster gun, no doubt adapted from one of Tony's weapons or a prototype. It reminded her of the days she'd spend before all this, when she'd have a free moment in her SHIELD years, when she might've created theory for a weapon of her own. She hadn't had a free moment to complete something as a hobby in a long time, not that she was complaining. She enjoyed working with her team, however much some of them wound her up. It brought her comfort to know that she could be there for people who would be there for her, and that could trust them. Maybe not as much as she trusted Natasha, herself, or even Fury, but she knew she could rely on them.

"Incoming already came in." Hot oil spattered over Roxi's face as she twisted get another robot into pieces, and though it wasn't hot enough to burn her, it certainly wasn't a nice feeling. Some had managed to get into her mouth, resulting in her spitting it out with a grimace on her face, before catching a metal arm mid-air. 

"Stark, you worry about bringing the city down safely. The rest of us have one job; tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed.. walk it off." Roxi registered Steve's words, but didn't respond as she tightened her proverbial grip on the robot in front of her. Ultron, in all his glory, was floating, suspended like the marionette she had compared him to in her mind the first time she'd seen him. He was no longer that battered legionnaire recovering from a harsher mission in the woods of Sokovia. He was now a sleek, powerful, machine, that was fuelled by his hate for Tony Stark, and to fulfil his vision; his own perfect world.

He didn't seem to bothered by the fact that she could crush, kill, or destroy him on a single whim. Instead, his silver face twisted into a metallic smirk that seemed tainted with the immoral intentions that he seemed to believe would let him save the world. Once again, she was faced with that oddly chilling expression: that of virtual curiosity, the unnerving interest in her that both Ultron and Vision seemed to hold. Momentarily, she wondered if JARVIS or even Tony were that curious about her. Tony had certainly shown interest in wanting to know more about her. Ultron's eyes gleamed wickedly as he finally spoke.

"Do you want to know why I find you so intriguing?" His voice hadn't changed from that deep rasp that he spoken to her with in the shipyard, but there was something new underneath it, something so intentionally maliceful. He was deliberately trying to make her negative emotions become stronger, trying to make her let them take her over so that she wouldn't fight as well, so that she would be fighting in this battle wit ha clouded mind. She was one of the Avengers who would have the most power over him. He was made of what she manipulated, controlled. She wasn't going to let this robot confuse her even further. He was made of metal; she would tear him into a thousand pieces and leave the pieces to erode down to dust. She was in control here, not him.

"I don't care. You're a homicidal psychopath in a tin body. Why should I listen to anything you have to say?" She practically growled her answer back, tightening the pressure on his form and watching the perfectly fitted metal plates begin to warp and pop out of place. It provided her with a strange sense of security. Sure, Ultron had his perfectly laid out plan, his thousands of troops and the intelligence of an AI and the power of an Infinity stone inside his virtual head, but Roxi had the ability to scatter all of those puzzle pieces as far as she wanted. She could ruin them, twist them out of shape until they would never go back to where they belonged. She was an Avenger. Their team might be small, but they were strong, and even if three of them were people they barely knew, they were fighting towards a common goal. Several people had gained powers due to Infinity Stones, even if it wasn't as directly as Ultron himself. Roxi might even have been one of them. She still wasn't entirely sure about how her powers had come into reality; all she knew was that it had something to do with Loki's sceptre. And that meant the mind stone. Ultron, however didn't seem to care about all that, because he simply laughed, before continuing his attempted intimidation.

"You act so cold, so heartless, but really, I think you're scared. You're still scared of your past, no matter what you tell yourself. You're scared that you won't be able to save these people, even with your power. You're scared of losing her, and that you won't be able to do anything about it." Ultron's words rung surprisingly clearly in Roxi's muffled words, and she despised how much she agreed with him. She was scared, she was terrified, and about so much more than that. The only thing that kept her from ripping him apart then was the anchor that he didn't know that she was scared of so much more. He had simply stated the obvious things, the things that anyone with a brain and a pair of eyes could see. A computer matric was his brain, the cameras in that system were his eyes. He was trying to make her mess up, trying to make her make a mistake that could cost them everything.

"You're right," she admitted through gritted teeth as she strengthened her stance, "but I'm not scared of you." With that, she sent him flying away from her with as much force as she could muster, slightly enjoying the sound of metal against rock, until she could no longer hear it. It was only then that she realised that she still had her comms on. Nobody said anything, maybe surprised by what she'd said, possibly shocked that she had admitted to feeling so much. Either way, if she had to, she would deal with it later. Instead, she offered a simple

"Anyone need a hand?"

{A/N:} Idk this one is short but I actually quite like it. Like really short, sorry lmao. I finally got a move on and actually started the battle, at least, sorry it's taken so long xD. No reunion quite yet, most of that's probably going to be after the main fight, maybe? Idk, we'll see, but I actually have a few plans for the time between AoU and CA:CW. Speaking of, what team do you think she'll be on?

Team Cap or Team Tony? Also, this book is ending up much longer than I thought. I expected it to be around 60 chapters in total and I'm already at 41, so this will probably ending up having a lot of chapters. Oh yh, if any of you know the 100, I decided to start a Lexa fic. The first chapter's up id you're interested. Well, as usual,

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

2050 Words

Written: 06 / 03 / 2021

Published: 06 / 03 / 2021