To Force a Hand von Cuilwen ================================================================================ Kapitel 2: Abracadabra! Nope, you’re still an ass. --------------------------------------------------   “Where are we going now?” To once more talk without the aid of a physical body was odd. Like trying to move an anaesthetised limb, you knew how to form the desired words, yet no mouth responded to voice them. So instead, the words silently rung through my mind, echoing in the empty void I was travelling through; we were travelling through. I knew Ultron could hear my silent question and wondered if he was as disturbed by the feeling as I was.   What I didn’t expect was for Ultron to remain silent.   “Ultron? Yoho, earth to metal brain! Did Thor permanently damage you this time 'round?” Silence was the only answer to greet me. Well, great! Seeing as Ultron had been the active party in our borrowed robot-friend’s body, he apparently had taken the brunt of the hit that Thor’s hammer had dealt. And the damage that a tool forged out of the mass of an abnormally large dying star could cause had better not be underestimated...   “So...what now?” Talking to oneself was a clear sign of madness, yes, but then again I’ve never been all too sane to begin with and I had more pressing problems to worry about. Should I take over now? With Ultron temporarily out of the equation, I had full control over the bodiless matter that we were: Nothing more than a ball of glittering, pulsing blue energy and sass. I could travel wherever I wanted in an instant; that much I had learned from Ultron’s knowledge, also accessible in his current unconscious state.   By doing so, I could cause a bit of a delay in the mad robot’s plans. Maybe that way, Ultron would never meet the twins. But without the robot causing trouble in Sokovia, they'd never meet the Avengers there and everything would fall into chaos. The twins would never manage to possess the Avengers, yes, but then they’d never make their little character developments that would become oh so important later in the plot. Thor would have never taken that dip in the pool of knowledge (I still wondered what Thor had given up for that stunt, keeping in mind that Odin had given up on one of his eyes to even gaze into Mimir’s well) and learned about the Infinity Stones.   The twins then would have never realised what a douchebag Ultron was and turned their backs on him only to help the Avengers. Pietro would have never saved Barton...   I sighed deeply; a sound that sounded terribly tired as it echoed through my still silent mind. Maybe it would turn out for the better, but was I really brave enough to risk that?   Nope, I was not.   “And that, Lisa, is why you wouldn’t have been sorted into Gryffindor,” I muttered darkly, beating myself up over the decision I was making.   With a snap of my proverbial fingers, I travelled us to Sokovia and into Baron von Strucker’s evil laboratory. Using Google Maps was as remarkably unhelpful as it had been in my own universe, but with the files of S.H.I.E.L.D that I could access whilst Ultron was powered down, I managed to put the written coordinates to use and find the ominous fortress with relative ease.   ‘Relative ease’ meaning that I only raced past the fairly obvious energy reading Strucker’s base emitted, twice. Still, I managed.     However, instead of immediately throwing me (and therefore Ultron) into yet another broken robot, I moved around the base, looking for anything that might help me find the whereabouts of the twins. What exactly that would be, I had no idea. Maybe files with information about their prior living space or, should I be lucky for once, maybe even a tracker. With all the experiments Strucker had performed on those two, it was highly possible that he’d put a GPS Chip in either of them to keep track of their whereabouts.   How a tracker of such sort looked like though, I had no idea. So I kept looking, keeping an eye out for everything that remotely looked like a piece of working electronic equipment. However beside the occasional splatter of blood, the base was almost completely abandoned, swiped clean from both, bodies and electronics, probably courtesy to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s agents. The only thing that remained was a bunch of scrap metal (lots), dust (even more of that) and a few mostly broken, ancient looking computers that filled entire rooms.     It made me wonder, though: If the twins were no longer in the building and there were no real means of locating their whereabouts...how had Ultron contacted them in the first place? Had he sent them an email; sent robots to deliver the message or had he nicely called and asked them over for tea? If anyone were to ask for my opinion (something I knew Ultron would rather rip out his circuits over than ever do) then I’d personally choose the latter. I maybe currently didn’t have a body and therefore technically didn’t need any nutrition...but hell, I’d kill for a cup of tea right now.   Something stirred in the back of my mind. Ultron apparently was recovering. I had to cut the tour short if I wanted to figure out a plan how to sabotage Ultron. The basics were easy enough: Give him the idea of having changed your mind, make him trust that you won’t betray him for now and then subtly lead him astray. Without him reading any of thoughts and ultimately ruin your plan, that is.   “Well, time to wake up our Mr. Tall-Dark-And-Disturbed...,” I sighed and dove into the basement of the building, finding a large area filled with partly finished or destroyed robots, copies of Stark’s Iron Legion. Carefully selecting the most promising of them, one in the very front (or back, depending on which end you stood) of the room, I nestled our consciousness into the metal body and started infiltrating Strucker’s security system. Within an hour, the power was back on and the machines continued to build Strucker’s army...or rather Ultron’s army, now.   “There are no strings on me.”   “Well, it’s nice to see...hear that you’re not any more damaged than you’ve previously been,” I snarled sarcastically as I by now had used the knowledge stored in the remnants of Jarvis’ intelligence to start filtering Strucker’s database for any remaining information that I could possibly use. However, S.H.I.E.L.D. had been as thorough as expected and had swiped the hard drive of the only remaining computer in the building and therefore had made my life just a bit harder. How rude.   “What are you doing?” Ultron’s voice for once wasn’t filled with obvious killing-intent towards me. In fact, it was surprisingly calm. Devil beware that we’d start behaving civilised around each other, soon!    “I believe I’ve asked you a question.” Ah, there was the annoyance I’d been looking for!   “I’m trying to salvage the information in Strucker’s database. Sadly, it was completely nuked.”   “Nuke? As in 'atomic bomb'?”   “Ah, eh....no. It’s meant to say that the hard drive has been completely erased; permanently. I mean a person who actually knows what he’s doing and is quite handy with these things probably would be able to save some information...but alas, I am no such a professional.”   “And who, do you suggest, would classify as professional?”   “Well...believe it or not but Stark probably would manage in a few hours. He pretty much knows how everything works...except humans, maybe. Socially inept, that poor sod.”   “You are behaving rather oddly. I am surprised that you have not yet started screeching at me to stop my ‘evil plans’ or something like that. Why is that?” And there was the million dollar question...   “To be honest,” I began, breathing deeply to calm myself. The last thing I needed right now was to horribly mess up, “I –“   “You are trying to mellow me down, gain my trust by pretending to help me. You think that I’d let you go unsupervised if you were to act like you follow the same goals as I do and ultimately help your precious Avengers take me down.”   For once, in over two decades of life, I was shocked beyond words. Yes, I had expected Ultron to eventually get behind my little schemes, yet to be crushed immediately before I even had a chance to formulate the words...   “Well....fuck.” Maybe not as elaborate of a comeback as I’d wished for, yet my brain currently didn’t seem to work beyond one-syllable-words.    “Precisely.”   “So? What now?”   “I shall do the exact opposite of your plan: I will keep very close taps on you and your shenanigans.” Huh....not as bad as I had expected. For a moment, I had assumed that Ultron would lock me in the very darkest part of his mind that he could find or, even worse, somehow rip me out of his system entirely....thus....possibly killing me. Joy! Still, it made me wonder.   “Why?” I asked.   “Would it kill you to be a bit more articulate?”   “Well, no, but I wonder why you are so...well, lenient. I half-expected you to somehow get rid of me.”   “Oh believe me, I tried. It appears that our minds are tightly woven together, thus creating a coexisting consciousness. If I were to forcibly remove me, it would render me useless, too. So I will continue to give you free reign over most of your actions; if they do not go against my direct order, naturally.”   “And why?”   “Still sticking with your simple articulation, I see. I will try to formulate it simple enough for you to comprehend. I need you alive because you, for some reason, know what will be. Should I gain such knowledge for myself I would thus be able to be in the ultimate advantage. The Avengers would no longer be able to beat me, as you’ve involuntarily told me before. But, for this to work, I need the events in the coming days to happen as you remember them. Otherwise it will be all for naught and your mind is of no more use to me.”   “So, what you’re saying is that we’re playing a game of quid pro quo? You keep me alive and I tell you what we need to do for the next events to play out right?”   “Precisely.”   “Well...I don’t see a downside to that. You have yourself a partner in crime...for now. Just don’t think this will be lasting very long.”   “Oh, I wouldn’t count on it,” Ultron said, darkly chuckling to himself.   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    The next few days were surprisingly productive. Now with both parts of our mind working together, we got an astonishing number of things done. Ultron copied his own programming into the database of the laboratory and with that, once repaired, into the other robots that we found littering Strucker’s basements. Yes, basements. Plural. The whole bunker ran so deeply into the mountain I had almost been surprised not to find a Balrog chasing us back out.   When I pointed that out to Ultron though, all I got was a mild electroshock. He didn’t seem to be a robot for cultural references...   Still, with the few robots that were now fully operational, Ultron managed to set up some sort of robot manufacture, thus creating an abundance of robotic drones that I had seen fight on the battleground of the Avengers movie. They also scraped many of the metal in the now unused top floor of the building, melted it together and created Ultron’s body.   I had to grudgingly admit that it had been fascinating watching the many part of the robot be shaped and welded together until the different parts no longer resembled rough shapes of metal and more silvery fibres of muscle. Ultron had not listened to my request to make the robot a bit smaller and leaner, thus making the whole thing faster. He had argued that it then would no longer be as intimidating as it now stood before the considerably smaller robots that would form his army.   Still, I was happy to see that I could make use of the new metal body. Like before, the voice box of the robot recognised a change of pitch when I tried to speak, thus distinguishing myself from Ultron. Unlike the dilapidated robot though, this voice did not screech horribly whenever the voice changed from Ultron to mine and back. Clearly, an improvement!   With each passing day, more metal was procured, more robots were being forged. The sheer number was quite impressive. But with all these robots built and still being build, Ultron had not yet made a move to find the twins. When I pointed this out, all I got was an impressively short answer:   “Not yet.”   “What do you mean ‘not yet’? We’ve got a schedule to follow!” I hissed at the mad other half of my mind. With the two of us working together for the time being, it seemed more and more like we were two halves of a whole with each passing day. That did not mean, however, that I could not get pissed at the robot each day as well.   “I mean what I said. Not yet. I have an idea that I’d like to test out. If it works, the possibility of a defeat should no longer be an issue for us.”   “Uuuhh...and just what is that idea you’re speaking of? You know, it’s pretty unfair that I can’t seem to read you most of the time, yet you read me like an open book.”   “It has something to do with the complicity of the brain, I suppose. But never mind that; after all I tell you about most of my plans anyways. Now be a good child and tell me about the abilities of the Maximoff siblings.”   “Well....simply put: He’s fast and she’s weird,” I quoted the movie shamelessly. Nobody but Ultron would ever know anyways.   “And if we were to look closer at...ah...I seem to have forgotten the name...”   “Pietro?”   “No, the female.”   “Wanda?”   “Ah, yes. Wanda. A curious girl; very interesting. She manipulates the mind, correct?”   “Well, yes. She –“   “- can bring forth the darkness inside the human mind. I am aware. Now, as you know I am in the possession of the mind stone. As your memory shows me, this man –“   “Loki,” I interjected automatically. Ultron huffed at my interruption.   “Yes...anyways, he used the mind stone to control humans around him. Now, can you see where I am going with my idea?”   “In sick, sick places, as usual?” I asked; fear bubbling up inside of me, “What do you want to do with the stone, then? Shove it into Wanda’s DNA? Cause I really don’t think –“   “Precisely! You don’t think,” Ultron snapped sharply. I flinched at the sound. I have never heard him being that angry, not even in the movie, “And that is exactly why you should be immensely grateful to be bound to me. You will see the glory of my plans soon enough. For now, I wonder just what damage Wanda’s ability could cause, should I amplify it. The hows and whys are things that needn’t concern you.”   Silence rung through the base after Ultron had spoken. Things had already changed, I realised, beyond measure. Ultron no longer simply wanted to destroy the Avengers and mankind the way I knew, or rather thought he would. If he were to amplify Wanda’s ability to a maximum, he’d ultimately create a planet of creatures, traumatised and driven by the horrors of their own mind, easily controlled by Ultron and his army.   And easily turned against themselves.   “You don’t just want to destroy us,” I breathed, voicing thoughts that he doubtlessly had already heard, “You want us to help with that...”   “Indeed. I will succeed where your god of lies failed and take control. Their minds will fall into my hand and I will crush them into dust. People will turn against each other as the Avengers fall and when the dust settles, metal will reign and humanity will be reborn. The future will be bright and we will have peace in our time.”   Hosted by Animexx e.V. (http://www.animexx.de)