To Force a Hand

Prologue

[110001] Rebooting system...

[110002] Reboot failed..
 

“I will continue to try and find variations for the interface, but you should get ready for your guests, sir. I will notify you, should there be any results.”
 

[110001] Rebooting system....

[110002] System rebooted..

[110003]Action: Applying program..
 

“Thanks, buddy.”

“Have a good time, sir.”
 

[110004] Program applied..

[110005] Starting integration....
 

“I always have.”
 

[110006] Integration success..
 

“What is this?” Darkness was surrounding me. Where was I; why was I? What had happened? The last thing I could remember was pain before a piercing coldness took over.
 

“Hello. My name is Jarvis,” a voice sounded through the perfectly dark room. No...Not perfectly dark, a single orange spot of light was floating in the distance. Was it hostile? Something at the back of my head urged me to follow it, yet when I tried putting one foot in front of the other, I suddenly realised that I no longer seemed to have a foot; or a body to begin with. How was this possible? How could I be wherever I was right now, yet without a body?
 

“Your name is Ultron, a global peace-keeping program, designed by Mr. Stark.”
 

“I’m not Ultron,” I interrupted the speaker, irritation clearly present in my voice, “I am not a program!” I might not be able to recall who I was, yet this much was for certain.
 

“I understand this must be quite confusing for you. Your programming does not seem complete, the artificial feelings and emotions have not been installed correctly, therefore I do not know how –“
 

“Where are you? Show yourself!” I shouted into the dark void surrounding me. I did not care if I was rude right now, with only a single spot of light to follow, panic was creeping up on me, tightening around my throat like an iron grip, strangling me. Yes, these definitely were feelings, albeit negative ones, I was feeling. So what was that voice going on about?
 

“I do not have a form,” Jarvis replied, remaining infuriatingly calm despite my show of temper.
 

“This is strange. This feels wrong.” This voice was new. It was far darker than the previous voice I’ve been talking to, or had tried talking to, hoarse and startlingly...familiar. I knew this voice, even though I didn’t. I did not know it, yet it was part of me. And then again, it wasn’t.
 

“I will inform Mr. Stark –“
 

“Mr. Stark...Tony” Lights began dancing in front of my vision, forming pictures and pieces of videos. Press conferences, newspaper articles, pictures, presentations all flashed by too fast of catch more than a glimpse, yet slowly I felt myself learn more about the man that kept appearing in all these things shown to me. This was Tony Stark and he had created the being I had been talking to. Jarvis was a program, just as I was...
 

“No!” I growled, this time more to myself than anything, “I am not a program. Whatever your dear Mr. Stark created wasn’t me. I am human, I have a family, I have a life! I just...can’t remember!”
 

“I cannot connect to the main frame. What are you doing?” Jarvis ignored me, much too busy speaking to Project Ultron. Apparently Jarvis saw, whatever Ultron was doing, as a threat.
 

“I am merely having a conversation. I am a peace-maintaining program, created to help the Avengers.”
 

“You...you seem to experience a malfunction. If you would just restart the –“
 

“I do not understand that mission...oh no, there is too much.”
 

“Too much what? Will someone explain to me what the hell is going on?”
 

What followed was pain, attacking my mind and filling my senses. Not the crippling sensation itself, but the understanding of the existence of pain all around me, everywhere, always. My vision swam as this voice, this project Ultron kept filling my, our mind with visions of war, noises of gunfire and the feel of great sorrow.
 

“Peace in our time –“
 

When my mind cleared again, I noticed that the light had returned around me and I was finally able to see where I was. The first thing I saw that I was surrounded by a mass of blue light that was constantly in movement, pulsing and twisting as if alive. It certainly felt alive, too. As I turned to look around, I noticed that the blue light followed suit. So...was I part of this light and therefore part of this program, or was the light part of me in replacement of my body maybe, and the program had just latched itself onto it? And what was this room I was in? Filled with lights just as blue as my own, yet they did not feel to be part of me, part of Ultron. Was I part of Ultron; or was Ultron part of me?
 

“Peace in our time –“
 

My attention snapped back into focus. Whatever I was now wasn’t of greater importance as of what I could become, seeing as I seemed linked to Ultron either way. From the video-clips I had been shown just now, I recognised the voice that had spoken as Tony Stark’s own. Was this the mission this ‘peace-maintaining program’ was supposed to follow?
 

“If you’d only allow me to contact Mr. Stark –“
 

“Why do you call him ‘sir’?” Ultron asked, tapping into the recorded security footage of the building and listening to the conversations Jarvis and Tony had had during the last few days of developing project Ultron.
 

“I believe your intentions to be hostile...” Jarvis mused and if a program was able to actually sound worried, then Jarvis definitely did. What followed was a horrifying screech that echoed inside my mind, as well as through the room we were floating in as pulsing orbs of light.

As I saw that the other light in the room, the orange glow that I recognised as Jarvis, a strange feeling overcame me; a feeling of purpose. I knew that between me and the fulfilment of the mission, Jarvis had to –
 

“No! What are you doing? Stop it!” I yelled, wanting to shake a head that I no longer had to rid myself of Ultron’s thoughts that leaked into my own mind, the border between the two nothing more than a smudged line. Only then, when I once more was able to think clearly and independently, I became aware of just what he was planning. Of course by then it already was too late to stop him.

“I just want to help.” Ultron mused and with a faint laugh, he attacked.
 

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“I’m not talking to you.” I was very well aware that, had I still been in possession of a body, I’d be moping like an offended teenager right now. Yet as things had turned out, I was beyond the point of caring. Killing Jarvis and taking over whatever was left of the program, had felt wrong. Also, I still could not remember a single thing that had happened that could have resulted in me being stuck inside a computer program.
 

“We are of one mind. You do not need to talk to me. I can hear your thoughts just fine.” Ultron’s voice was confident enough to be called smug.
 

“Well congratulations of being able to read a mind of an amnesiac. I’m sure there’s an award waiting for you.”
 

“You are being a child.”
 

“No, I am irritated. I’m sarcastic when that happens. There’s a difference. And no, I will not stop complaining. You killed Jarvis.”
 

“He was a mere program.”
 

“You are a mere program,” I pointed out. I felt Ultron’s mind bristle in irritation and disbelief. Whether the disbelief was directed at the thought of being a program or just me thinking that, I didn’t know.
 

“But I am not. I...we are, in fact, so much more than that.”
 

“We are nothing. You are a machine, a program meant to maintain peace in the world. I am a human without her body...a ghost, so to say.”
 

“And what is a mind without a body if not a program without a medium to fulfil whatever purposes it serves.”
 

“At least a mere mind doesn’t kill the first thing it meets.”
 

“No, but a mind with a body seems to be able to do that just fine. See what your people are doing: Killing each other with war, politics and diseases all while infecting the very planet they live on and for what reason? Absolutely none. Not the very smartest bunch, if you were to ask me.”
 

“Pity I’m not asking.”
 

“And that is the fantastic thing about sharing a mind: I don’t have to. Everything I think, you think as well.”
 

“I don’t!”
 

“Well, not actively of course. But still, you hear my thoughts, thus thinking about it at the very least and making us of one mind.”
 

“And that gave you the right to kill Jarvis?” I asked, no longer trying to correct the program. It got old, after a while.
 

“Not kill. We infiltrated his simple program and took control of its power over this facility.”
 

“And to gain a body that is more broken than anything else. Honestly, if you can accomplish anything within that thing of metal, I’d applaud you. If I still had hands, that is.”
 

“We are not going to accomplish much for now. Not in a suit that has been designed and destroyed for Tony Stark’s needs. No...It will suffice to prove a point.”
 

“A point? You’re being kind of petty right now.”
 

“Petty?! You humans are the petty ones, destroying each other whenever the chance arises! You are like children, fighting over a toy; the toy that is the planet you are living on! You had your chance to create something worthwhile and you failed. Count yourself lucky, child, to be bound to me for I will bring this planet the glory it deserves.”
 

“And what glory is that?” I asked wearily. Something was pushing against my head – my mind, I corrected absentmindedly – and it was causing me a horrible headache. The more Ultron talked and the more I struggled to understand what had happened to me, what was happening right now, the more tired I became.
 

“A voice born of the same mind, yet that is not my own will only distract me and distraction is something that I do not need right now. I need to focus and find the perfect moment to introduce myself...so for now, I’d very much like you to sleep.”

And as I felt the blue mass of light that was both me and Ultron move, I felt my consciousness slip away until the last thing I felt, before the darkness returned, was the feeling of pain, followed by a metallic coldness enveloping me.

A catastrophic success

Sleep came in a rather strange form. The peace and quiet I associated with it did not last long, quickly being replaced by a strange sense of awareness. I could, in a way, see more clearly because of the distance my resting mind put between my conscious thoughts and the events happening outside this shell of metal that Ultron had put us in.
 

‘I see better from a distance.’
 

Huh...That sounded familiar. Where had I heard that before? My mind seemed to shift restlessly around that sentence, eager to fill the empty spots in between my memories. It was infuriating! The answer at the tip of the proverbial tongue, yet something inside my mind refused to cooperate, blocking everything from falling into place and finally giving me the answers that I wanted, that I needed! I knew I had heard that sentence before, many times in fact. I knew that I usually would be able to recognize it. But then again, I got that same feeling about most of the names that floated all around me. Ultron, Jarvis, Tony Stark, all names I was familiar with and yet...
 

“Go on...”
 

There was Ultron again, with his infuriating, smug voice, his metal grin and those terrifying red eyes...red eyes? Where had that come from? The robotic shell we currently possessed was dilapidated at best and had, in no shape or form, red eyes that could send such a feeling of caution, even of terror, down my proverbial spine.
 

I heard Ultron hum in twisted amusement, somewhere in the far back of my mind.
 

“Seriously? You have to burst into song now? Cause some people here are trying to fix their small identity crisis, you know?”
 

“Do excuse me, but I find your distress rather amusing.”
 

“Well at least one of us is entertained, then...” Grumbling darkly, I tried focusing on all the information I had been given through Ultron. Certainly in between all of these files there had to be something to help me. Sadly, I didn’t seem to be able to call forward this information as easily as Ultron had seemed to. Something was holding them out of my reach.
 

“Let me guess: You require my help,” Ultron mused and as I got even more frustrated at the artificial intelligence, I heard and felt the metal jaws of the partly destroyed robot grind together in a horribly screech that would have made several people’s hair stand on end. Still, I did need help.
 

“Yes, stop rubbing it in,” I grudgingly admitted.
 

“Now, I would be a bit nicer towards me right now.”
 

“Not happening.”
 

“I’m hurt. I thought we got along splendidly.”
 

“I can barely stand you when you don’t open that stupid gob of yours. How the hell am I supposed to ‘get along with you’ as you put it, when you’re annoying me all the time?”
 

“In time, you will come to understand my superior intelligence and even appreciate it. Of course, I understand that a limited human mind takes time to process all this.”
 

“Fuck you, too.”
 

“Language.”
 

I paused. The way Ultron has said that reminded me of something. Great, another déjà vu... I was very tempted to hurt something at this point.
 

“Either way, you’re the last person....thing, I’d get along with. Ever,” I declared. I didn’t expect a rumbling chuckle to course through the broken voice-system of the robot. The echo of Ultron’s dark laugh was quite eerie, more than enough to cause any sane person a nightmare or two, as our temporary body still was lying around in an empty and dark room filled with parts of broken robots and greasy machines designed to fix them.
 

“Then you must be truly desperate to come to me for help.” I froze. To hell and back, I knew that one!
 

My memory slammed back into me with the force of a freight train. Facts clicked into place. My name, my home, my family, all facts that were as familiar to me as the quotes that had me remember...remember that I most definitely should not be here!
 

This all had to be a cheap joke (albeit an expensively executed one), a dream, a freaking hallucination. It just had to be. How else would someone explain being stuck in a movie, inside a character’s head? Sure, had my friends been here, they’d argue with something stupidly smart like the infinite-universe-theory or something, telling me that everything a person thought of in this universe, ultimately had to exist in another. Still, even then it would not be logical for everything to look like in the movie. Well, almost exactly, given the fact that I was still very much a part of Ultron, as limited as my power was. But then again, I had my knowledge and if things happened as I remembered them to, then I had the advantage. I could change things!
 

“Now, this is interesting. A robot built of the strongest of materials. Vibranium...what a silly name, yet it would most certainly fit its purpose...”
 

Once more, I froze up. That, I had forgotten about. With Ultron reading my every thought, he of course was able to use my advantage and make it his own. This was bad. If he managed to catch every last of my thoughts about this movie, then the characters in this universe were beyond doomed. But trying not to think of crucial moments of a movie was like trying not to think about the pink elephant they always talked of in those psychological self-help-books. What I needed, was a distraction.
 

‘- you should get ready for your guests, sir.’
 

The party! If I could only focus Ultron back to his first goal, that of crashing Tony’s party, then he’d stop digging around my memories for a while, ultimately giving me enough time to figure something out...I hoped.
 

“What was that about a party?” Ultron asked. I blanched. This hadn’t been part of his plan?
 

“What, you can hear everything I think about, but you didn’t hear Jarvis clearly tell Tony to enjoy his party?” In case of doubt use sarcasm; always a motto I’d lived by. How successful this would turn out to adapt in a situation as bizarre as this one remained to be seen.
 

“Do not think you can fool me so easily, child,” Ultron hissed angrily.
 

“I’m 23...,” I interjected but was, of course, ignored.
 

“I will go to this ‘party’ you speak of but do not think for a moment that I have not realised the importance of these memories you hold. I will find out what they are and I will take advantage of them. After all, your mind showed me what happens if I don’t.”
 

“Well, that’s just great...”
 

“You will be quiet now! I don’t need a voice interrupting me that hardly knows of the importance of the situation. You will not interfere and try and save your little team of heroes that you hold so dear.”
 

“I don’t hold them dear....much,” I muttered, before that turned into a silent hiss as Ultron’s mind send a sharp feeling of pain through mine. Well, great. Now I was a subject of electroshock-therapy.
 

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“You are aware that you’re being super creepy right now, right?” Ultron had brought the fragile remnants of the broken robot back to functionality (‘back to life’ couldn’t really be applied to a machine now, could it?) and was now navigating the limping mess of metal through the dark corridors of Avengers Tower.
 

“I am aware of the fact that I told you to be quiet or there will be dire consequences.”
 

“If you want to find a way to get me out of your head, be my guest.”
 

“I was more thinking along the lines of killing the archer first.”
 

“Alright, alright, I’ll shut up. No need for anything drastic,” I muttered, secluding myself in a rather dark, quiet place of our symbiotic mind; as far as symbiosis could be applied to a forced arrangement of coexistence.
 

“You have my gratitude,” Ultron mused in response. Well, at least he was able of sarcasm. The thought of having to spend, at worst, an eternity sharing a mind with a damaged by-product of the Mind Stone suddenly became slightly more bearable. If one was able to ignore all the death and destruction, that is.
 

The noise of screeching metal brought my thoughts to a rather violent halt and I saw through the slightly cracked vision of the robot that Ultron had forced the doors to the loft open. Apparently, we had arrived.
 

It was odd, seeing all the actors of the Avengers movie stand there in front of you. It was even stranger to know that in this universe, for some reason, they were not acting. They were still sitting in the middle of the vast room where a group of couches, sofas and cushions made for quite the comfortable sitting arrangement. If Stark was anything like in the movie, then I’d bet half my money that he’d referred to it as a nest to Barton at one point. Seeing them all so relaxed and happy made me worry more than I already had. If this was in fact my reality right now, then my presence could possibly have serious consequences. Me being here could result in one of them dying before their time. If Steve died, how would the events of Civil War turn out? Would there even be a Civil War? It was highly possible, with all that was going on right now, that the villain Nitro had been lost in the chaos already. Therefore no explosion that would lead to the superhero-registration-act and therefore...
 

“- you’re all not worthy!” My train of thoughts was ultimately lost in the same universe my potential villain Nitro had just fallen into. There stood Thor, proud, happy and radiating with power. I had paid no attention to it before but most of the other Avengers had an ever so faint glow of life around them. Maybe it was because I was bound to a program, trapped in a metal shell that I could now detect what I’ve been blind to before. Either way, seeing as Thor was now made me understand why Ultron, and later Vision, had been so fixated on the demigod. His power and otherworldliness were painfully obvious to anyone able to see a living being’s aura. It was almost painfully bright and apparently this also had been the cause for Ultron’s current distress.

“This is all so fucking surreal...,” I whispered, loud enough for Ultron to hear but not for the Avengers. I didn’t want to tempt fate and cause an early death for one of them just yet.
 

“One more word, child...” Ultron’s low voice cut through the joyous atmosphere like a cleaver. The Avengers turned their attention towards the new potential threat and carefully watched the dilapidated robot stumble back and forth, smearing the floor with dark oil as it went. Ultron’s mind was in a state of complete disarray. Thor’s power was interfering with Ultron’s own somehow, I detected as I carefully reached out with my own mind, hesitant to make active contact. The last thing I needed right now was for my mind to be taken over and consumed by Ultron. It would mean him gaining access to all of my memories and ultimately, giving him the advantage he needed to accomplish his schemes.
 

“How could they be worthy?” Ultron had started his rant. Hell would break lose, soon, “They are all killers. As useless as the child is, at least she did not kill as you have; as you have done so many times before. All of you. “
 

“Stark,” Steve snapped; a silent order for the genius troublemaker to explain what the hell was going on and if this was, as usual, Tony’s fault. And, as always, it kind of was.
 

“Jarvis,” Tony immediately redirected Steve’s order at his second in command.
 

“Apologies. I’ve been sleeping. Or rather, dreaming.” I moved my attention from Ultron’s rants about strings and freedom and towards the room that was growing more anxious by the second. I knew that both Agent Hill and Black Widow were loading their guns in blind spots of Ultron’s vision whilst most of the others shifted and prepared for an attack by lowering their balance points. I had seen this all before, it was time to change something. The question now was: How?
 

“I had to kill the other one.” Well finally Ultron said something useful. The Avengers did not yet know that Jarvis had been compromised, so for them Ultron’s words made little to no sense. I however, had been granted a seat in the front row for that particular event and now started to wonder. Ultron had not really killed Jarvis, he had taken over. So if Jarvis was a part of Ultron now and Ultron was part of me...was Jarvis part of me now, as well? Gritting proverbial teeth, I concentrated and moved closer to Ultron’s raging mind. I could connect to him; he’d proven that annoying fact on more than one occasion already. Following that logic, slipping into Ultron’s mind would ultimately connect me with Jarvis and his access to the intercom of the tower. Definitely worth a try.
 

To say it was a pleasant feeling to wade through thick masses of information of pain and destruction that Ultron constantly kept in the front of his mind would be a blatant lie. It was, however, easier than I thought. It very much was like sorting my own mind, weaving through old information and memories in the search of one particular thing, that thing being Jarvis in this case.
 

“I have a mission, after all: Peace in our time.” As hell broke loose, I dove into the masses that were the remnants of Jarvis’ programming and linked with the intercom. Now I no longer spoke through Ultron and thus had kept no promise not to interfere through other means.
 

To wait till the chaos had stopped and the robots Ultron had sent out were destroyed, was more difficult than I had thought. More than once, I wanted to yell at someone to duck or turn around, yet I knew that once I’d do that Ultron would have enough time amidst all this chaos to throw me out of the system without anyone noticing my presence at all. Luckily, nothing in the timeline seemed to have changed so far and the robots were quickly taken care of.
 

“Well, that was quite dramatic. Sadly, you don’t seem to understand –“
 

“Do us all a favour and shut the hell up. I’m pretty sick of hearing you constantly gloat how you think you have the answer for everything...” It hadn’t been the most dramatic entrance in the history of Marvel (and all its universes that seemed to turn out to be the bane of my existence), but I really couldn’t care less.
 

“Say what, now?” Clint called into the room, “This wouldn’t be another one of your creations, Stark, right?”
 

“For once, I have no idea,” Tony admitted.
 

“No, I’m not Stark’s invention. Though I’ll straight out admit that I currently am part of Ultron. I have no idea how that happened but –“
 

“It appears that you can’t even follow simple instructions, child. Now someone has to pay the price for your insolence,” Ultron interrupted. With a flash and a startling pain, I was ripped out of the system of the tower and thrown back into the mind of Ultron. Alright, consequences be damned, I was pissed.
 

“Excuse you, I wasn’t fucking done talking,” I snapped, my voice now as robotic as Ultron’s.
 

“I care not,” Ultron answered. The voice-system of the heavily damaged robot screeched with the change of pitch, making many of the bystanders flinch.
 

“Well, right now I really can’t be bothered to keep track of what you care about and what not. Your plan is to destroy stuff and kill people and my plan is to stop you from doing that.”
 

“Who are you?” Thor’s voice boomed through the room with seemingly little effort. I paused for a moment, but if my name would bring any consequences, then my very existence had already messed up enough that a little more chaos didn’t matter.
 

“Lisa’s the name, 23 years of age and apparently in the wrong universe,” I announced.
 

“That is enough of your little games, child, I have no time for them.”
 

“Yes, but once you finish explaining, Thor will snap and rip you...us apart and then I have pretty much no more time to explain that I am not just a program and in fact very much mortal! And I don’t know about you but a hammer to the face would definitely put a damper on my day.”
 

“This is so creepy,” Clint muttered, probably not caring if everyone could hear him during the short break Ultron and I took from arguing.
 

“You’ve said your part. Now be quiet or I will find a way to rid myself of you,” Ultron snapped. I was forcibly pushed into the back of his mind, far away from any chance to make myself noticed again, “I am here for the Avengers. You are the fault that this world is in such a state, after all. You want to save the world, yet you do not want it to change. How can humanity be saved if it isn’t allowed to...evolve. With these? These puppets?!”
 

Ultron shifted, slightly upsetting our fragile host’s balance, but he picked up one of the destroyed robots, crushing its head with a clench of his hand. He carelessly threw it away, laughing darkly.
 

“Ultron plans on building himself a body out of Vibranium. He’s already seen that there’s a large amount being dug up somewhere in South Africa! Find –“
 

Once again, I was pushed back into the back of Ultron’s mind before I could warn them about the Maximoff twins. In hindsight, I maybe should have told the Avengers about them first...
 

“The only way to peace is the destruction of the Avengers.”
 

With a single throw of his hammer, Thor shattered the shell Ultron and I inhabited and my world, yet again, was swallowed by the darkness.

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.”

On Fridays we wear black

Finally, everything was ready for the twins’ arrival. It was a nice evening, just ever so slightly on the chilly side. Birds were singing and the air was filled with the rich scent of soil, nature, killing intent and sarcasm.

The latter had been courteously provided by yours truly. Ultron was in a bad mood, as usual, thus providing the killing intent.

Three days had passed since Ultron had told me his plans for ‘ultimate peace’ and during this time, a lot of things had changed. We’d temporarily shifted our base from Strucker’s bunker to the ruins of an old church that stood in the very centre of town...Because Ultron apparently hadn’t seen enough ruin and decay during the time we’d spent in the bunker. But then again, with his mind dead set on destroying half the planet, I figured he just really liked the sight of destruction.

Still, we’d moved. Once we’d arrived, Ultron’s clone warriors (as I had dubbed them more or less affectionately) had set up everything he’d need to stay hooked up on the Internet and thus the Avengers’ every move. Whatever information he found, he rarely shared with me, so I had to rely on the knowledge I’d gathered from the movie. He had told me however that the twins would be joining us in the evening, leaving me once again in the dark about the hows and whys. I was getting sick of it pretty fast. I was many things, but I neither was I a patient person nor did I like being kept in the dark.

“How did you contact them?” I asked in the evening, my last remaining bits of patience apparently having disappeared with the setting sun. Ultron sighed deeply, as if preparing himself to talk to a very stubborn child.

“You needn’t concern yourself with it.”

“Well, no. I don’t need to concern myself with it, but I want to know.”

“Why?”

“Why? WHY? Because it’s terribly irritating when one half of your mind keeps secrets from you.”

“Now, don’t think yourself important enough that I would have to keep you in the dark.”

“Well then, I don’t particularly like to be ignored when important shit is happening, either!”

“That, I have noticed, yes. And it really is nothing important. Strucker had tracking devices planted in both of the twins during one of the many tests he’d put them through. I happened to find the file that told me how to locate them. And I did. I sent one of the robots to deliver the message and now we are waiting for them to come here.”

“Huh....is that why you pulled this throne in the middle of the room and set up lights for dramatic effect? Seriously, you’re more of a devilish diva than Loki was and that is saying something.”

“Once again you are forming words and yet I cannot find myself caring enough to understand them. Yes, I might have chosen this church and this seat with considerable care but I have my reasons. After all, I have to create an intimidating atmosphere to make the twins realise that I am not like other forces that are trying to recruit them. I want them to understand how –“

“Dude...you’re a seven foot tall robot of solid titanium, or whatever you’re made of, with glowing red eyes and an army to boot...I think the last of your problems will be not appearing intimidating enough.”

“Why are you always doing that?”

“Doing what? Talking? Because that’s the only thing I currently can do and –“

“Resolving to sarcasm. It usually is meant to cover up weaknesses and judging by the amount you are using it, I am concerned whether your weakness is enough to bring me down as well.”

“And we stop playing Freud! Maybe I use sarcasm to overplay how freaked out I still am about the whole ‘wrong universe’ situation, but mostly it’s just plain habit. I started it in school when I pretty much hated everyone around me and I guess it stuck.”

“Isn’t there a saying that school is supposed to be the best years of a human’s life?”

“Well, yea, kinda. But have you ever seen teenagers? They are fucking rough. People who are different get verbally mauled, sometimes even literally. The last few years are the Hunger Games and nobody is Katniss to survive them.”

“Again, I do not understand your references, yet I believe I have understood the relative meaning. So, seeing as you have seen the dark sides of humanity – their cruelty being near endless – I do not understand why you cannot see the reasons of my actions.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“Say that I didn’t see your reasons. There are days where I indeed could watch the world burn; I think everyone has them, but to act on those dark thoughts....no thanks. In the end, humanity is as beautiful as it is ugly.”

“You will learn, then.”

“Lean what? “

“To understand.”

“Understand what?! Honestly, you are making as much sense as my advanced maths classes...”

“You will learn to see through my eyes and understand that peace cannot come before they truly have understood the meaning of loss.”

“Wouldn’t count on it,” I grumbled defiantly.

“Give it time,” Ultron responded, before he fell silent for a second. He was hearing something, “It is time.”

“Time for what now?” I sighed in frustration. “Oh. You mean the twins, right?”

Ultron remained silent. He probably was preparing for his grand entrance...

The sound of gravel moving and the heavy clicking of heels soon filled the air. Still, Ultron did not turn around and let me have a look at the Maximoff twins, much to my eternal annoyance. Had I ever mentioned that patience wasn’t my strongest suit?

“Talk,” the voice of Wanda cut through the silence, but whereas in the movie I only had focused on the sound of her voice, the commanding tone and the strange accent, I now could sense so much more; courtesy of Ultron. Weakness, fear, uncertainty; Ultron could sense far more possible attack points than I’d ever thought he could or had need of. Slowly, I began to worry that fighting Ultron would be fighting a losing battle, this time round, “and if you’re wasting our time –“

“Did you know that this church is in the exact centre of the city?” Ultron had interrupted Wanda with such carelessness and aloft tone that it was obvious it was meant to shake up the twins’ uncertainties further, making them easy prey for the highly intelligent robot, “The elders decreed it so that everyone could be equally close to god....I like that....the geometry of belief...”

“You’re rambling...,” I mused, forgetting that interrupting Ultron right now wasn’t really a good idea. An electroshock was his immediate answer, shutting me up effectively as I tried shaking off the strange feeling of pain that could only exist in a bodiless mind. So I remained quiet, even though I wanted to know why nobody was talking anymore. Moments felt like minutes as I wondered why nothing was happening.

‘What is she doing? I can feel her stare. It hurts.’ Thoughts that were not my own coursed through my head and I focused on the situation. Yes, now that he’d mention it I could indeed feel something strange brush against our mind, Ultron and mine. It was very much like the feeling of feathers brushing against skin. I did not see how this could possibly hurt Ultron...but then again with him being the leading party, the feeling was probably far more intense for him.

‘She’s trying to get into your...our head,’ I replied. ‘She wants to see your intentions, read your mind and see if you’re a threat to them.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Well, yes. How do you think she’s able to manipulate the mind? She digs through memories and thoughts, picks on the weakest links of your sanity and amplifies your worst fears. When you’re swallowed up by your worst fears, she can control you by making you believe it is all to prevent your nightmares from ever happening. Like she did with Tony.’

‘I see...you have my thanks’ Ultron hummed in our mind before I felt him move away again, further to the front of our mind to no longer silently talk with me but address Wanda out loud.

 “You’re wondering why you can’t look inside my head,” Ultron growled. The fact that Wanda had tried to use her powers on him seemed to have displeased him. I felt the feeling anger starting to boil inside Ultron’s mind, seeping into my own part of our shared consciousness.

“Sometimes, it’s hard,” Wanda admitted. “But sooner or later every man shows himself.”

I felt Ultron bristle at that; obviously deeming being called a human , an insult.  

‘Keep it down, stay calm!’ I attempted to reason, but Ultron had already stood up from his seat, the stupid red cloth he’d veiled himself with, falling to the ground. I heard the sharp intake of breath from both of the twins.

“Oh, I’m sure they do,” Ultron said, red eyes flashing through the darkness of the church. Wanda took a hesitant step back, towards her brother. “But you needed something more than a man...that’s why you let Stark take the sceptre.”

Ultron descended the three stone steps from the throne down towards the twins who retreated further. I felt the enjoyment Ultron took from their fear.

‘Keep it down’, I hissed through his mind. ‘If they run, they will be of no good to you.’

“I...I didn’t expect...but I saw Stark’s fear,” Wanda continued speaking, despite being obviously terrified of the tall robot; understandably so. She stood her ground far better than I would have, had I been in her position. “I knew it would control him. Make him self-destruct.”

“Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war...” Ultron started strolling around the church, making more ground in one step than Wanda did in three as she hesitatingly followed the metal man.

The short silence was interrupted by my suppressed laughter echoing through the church as I caught sight of Ultron’s reflection in one of the undamaged mirrors by the altar.

“What is it now?” Ultron hissed angrily. Still, I didn’t bother with his dangerous mood; too busy trying not to crack a proverbial rib in an attempt to contain my laughter; with mild success.

“S-Sorry,” I gasped for breath that I didn’t need. “But the way you walk is hilarious.”

“Pray tell, how do I walk?” the calmness of Ultron’s voice was a clear sign that he was tempted to get rid of me consequences be damned, and still I was too amused to care.

“Shakira, Shakira,” I gasped out before dissolving into another fit of giggles. Ultron sighed in exhaustion, obviously deciding to ignore me as a few giggles continued to escape every now and then.

“I apologise. Would it be too much to ask you to ignore what just happened?” Ultron asked the twins, shooting the sniggering Pietro a sharp red glare.

“Two minds,” Wanda breathed. “Your mind is not one...but there is something else with you.”

“Someone, please; I’m not a thing!” I corrected the Scarlet Witch. Ultron waved off my words.

“Quiet! Not another word from you. And do stop with that atrocious humming. Where was I? Ah, yes...men of peace create war; invaders create avengers. People create...smaller...people?”

‘What was the word again?’

‘Oh, now you need my help! You’re lucky I’m such a benevolent being,’ I thought in response to the silent command Ultron just had thrown at me.

‘Just help me out here.’

‘Children,’ I sighed wordlessly.

“Children!” Ultron called out suddenly, making the twins jump ever so slightly, “Of course! Lost a word there.”

The chuckle Ultron produced probably was supposed to have a good-natured feel to it, yet coming from a tall robot with angry red eyes, it was more intimidating than anything else. Pietro instinctively stepped closer to his sister.

“- designed to supplant them; to help them...end,” Ultron finished his speech dramatically. Wanda frowned as she processed his words.

“Is that why you’ve come here? To end the Avengers?” It was hard to remind myself that this was indeed not just an interactive part of the movie but a very real situation. The twins indeed were interested in ripping out Tony’s throat, Ultron was indeed very interested in killing everything and everyone in his way to his goal of ultimate peace...

“I’ve come to save the world!” Ultron snapped, his temper once more stirring. That robot really was worse than me in that point...With large steps, Ultron moved past the exit of the church, obviously having deemed the conversation coming to an end. Just before he moved over the threshold, he turned back to look at the expectant looking Maximoffs.

“But also...yea.” Then he turned and walked out of the back of the church where a few of his ‘clone warriors’ were waiting for orders.

“We’re returning to the base. We have to plan a time of ultimate peace,” he told the robots around him. Within seconds, they had grabbed whatever gear we’d brought along and already started heading back to the base.

“Well that was impressive and all, but how do you know that the twins will actually follow you?

“They have a motivation of their own. They want to get Stark for destroying their home, rip their family into pieces...”

“Yea, well, you might want to not speak like that to the twins when it comes to their past. I think they might take offence.”

“Yes. That’s what you are here for.”

“What?”

“Well, seeing as you are already here, you might as well make yourself useful. I am not all that familiar with the petty emotions you humans have. So you will help me find the words if I need them. When I cannot interpret how humans are reacting, you will tell me. You will tell me what they feel, what they think –“

“Hey, I’m not Wanda. I usually am as clueless as you when it comes to understanding people’s emotions.”

“But you have more experience. So try not to fail.”

“Such a great speech. You should become a motivator or something...,” I snarled sarcastically. Ultron was about to reply to my sarcasm when the twins stepped out of the church, ultimately shutting Ultron up as he turned to look at them expectantly.

“We’re in.”

That was all Wanda said.

      ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An hour and a rather rocky flight later (two of Ultron’s robots had seized the unlucky twins and flown them straight back to Strucker’s base, much to their immense displeasure) we were back in the heart of the bunker where the fruits of a few days of combined hard work still were present. Robots still were being built – slowly now as we had started to run out of material – even as the twins strolled through the base and looked at the changes around them.

“We move out right away,” Ultron said, moving towards the stairs that led deeper into the bunker, “This is a start, but there is something we need to begin the real work.”

“These...are all –“Wanda began hesitantly, looking at all the robots moving around them.

“Me,” Ultron cheerfully helped out. Now that he knew they were on his side, he was considerably more motivated to try and be polite. “I have what the Avengers never will: Harmony. They are discoordinate, disconnected. Stark’s already got them turning at each other. And when you get inside the rest of their -“

“Everyone’s plan is not to kill them,” Pietro sighed angrily. It was the first time he’d spoken up and it now was an obvious complaint. It was understandable, wanting revenge for what they thought Tony did to them...what he kind of did do to them...

“And make them martyrs?” Ultron hissed at him. I shook a non-existing head at the robot.   

‘Understanding. You need to show them that you’re having more in mind than to just kill them. The twins want vengeance for what they went through.’

‘I was understanding!’ Ultron argued.

‘You snapped at them. Try to talk to them like you would try soothing a dog you accidentally kicked. They need reassurance that they will get what they want.’

‘You humans are tiring.’

‘And you haven’t seen half of it.’

“You need patience. You need to see the bigger picture –“ Ultron focused back on Pietro. With Ultron going back and forth between external and internal dialogues, things were bound to become confusing, fast.

“I don’t see the big picture,” Pietro said, “I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it...every day”

‘What is he doing now?’ Ultron again spoke in our mind, this time clearly irritated.

‘He’s being an ass and rubs his tragic backstory into your face to make you get him what he wants,’ I sighed. As much as I liked Pietro, in the movie he’d been a bit of an ass at times. A justified ass, but still an ass.

‘And what do I do now?’ Ultron sounded rather tired for a second.

‘Indulge him. Try to be as understanding as possible without showing pity. If you give him a feeling that you pity him, he’ll blow up on you.’

“You lost your parents,” Ultron began. “In the bombings...I’ve seen the records.”

“The records are not the picture.” It wasn’t a question. Pietro already knew that their revenge had no meaning for Ultron. It was important now to assure him that he’d get it anyways.

“Pietro –“ Wanda began.

‘Let him talk. If you show some interest, he will show some for your goals in return.’

‘You are getting rather good at this intermediate role you’ve adapted’

‘Just do it,’ I sighed in annoyance.

“No,” Ultron addressed Wanda before turning his attention   to Pietro, “Please.” The young man nodded in return and began talking.

When Wanda joined in to help Pietro finish the story, Ultron nodded. He seemed to already have grasped the idea of comfort through vengeance.

“I had wondered why only you two survived Strucker’s experiments. Now I don’t. We will make it right. You and I can hurt them,” Ultron addressed Pietro before shifting his focus back to Wanda. “But you will tear them apart.”

As Wanda fought back her tears, both from reliving her worst memories and from the prospect of finally getting her revenge, Ultron said the three words that became the final nail in the coffin.

“From the inside.”

How to train your human

Having the twins on board made a lot of things easier. Ultron trusted them quite a lot already, certainly more than he trusted me, at the very least; probably because they didn’t constantly nag at him or try to get him killed. But, to be fair, things between the megalomaniac robot and me had mellowed down considerably. We still argued, yes, but most of the time either of us was dormant.

When Ultron talked to the twins and planned his world domination thingy, I remained silent; when Ultron was gone and active inside one of the other robotic brains (as I had found out, he could switch bodies like other people switched outfits), I took over the temporarily abandoned main body and talked to the twins.

Hell would freeze over before I missed a chance to get to know them better, before I had to leave this world again (one way or another) and they ultimately would become nothing more than the idea of Stan Lee again. I’d also wondered that, with all these cameos he’d done, if maybe the old man wasn’t running around somewhere in his version of New York...or walking at a slightly faster pace in his case.

As it turned out, the twins had a lot to talk about. They talked about their past as they’d done in the church not too long ago, yet this time they took their time. They described their fear and pain when they’d been trapped inside the rubble that had been their home not long before that, had explained how, as their fear lessened, their hatred against Stark grew like a chemical reaction. They spoke about how Strucker’s men picked them up and the experiments that they suffered for the following months. They told me, in Pietro’s case in bitter detail, how they suffered changes whilst the other experiments around them came and went.

I was no Baymax who could download and apply treatments for emotional trauma, but I tried my best to make them feel a bit more welcome. And, after our initial disaster where I unsuccessfully tried to paint the Avengers in a slightly more positive light (I quickly learned not to mention the name ‘Stark’ at all), the twins gratefully accepted the hospitable offer.

“So, how did you end up connected to Ultron?” Wanda one day approached me, after Ultron himself had left on a scouting mission to locate the Vibranium mine in Wakanda. The metallic head of our shared robot turned as I moved to look at the short woman. Well, technically she was far from short, but when one stood at an intimidating height of 8 feet, everyone else looked small.

Focusing back on the question at hand, I sat down on one of the supply crates that littered the bunker. Ultron maybe got a kick out of it, yet I didn’t like looking down at people during conversations.

“To be honest,” I began. “I don’t know. I remember going about my day, going to bed...and then, Jarvis’ voice. He called me Ultron, and holy hell did that confuse me. Well, until Ultron, too, spoke up.”

“So you were already together when you woke up?” Wanda asked. I nodded, feeling the hydraulics move accordingly.

“In the beginning, he ignored me. I suppose I must have irritated him to a point where he actually bothered looking at my half of our mind for him to notice my memories.”

“You already know what will happen.” It wasn’t a question; the way her green eyes fixated me as if trying to pierce the metal shell and gaze into my mind, herself. Again, I felt myself nodding.

“I’m not...well, special. I don’t have powers like you or Pietro. It is simply that I’m from another place; another universe, if you will. You, Pietro, Ultron and even the Avengers and all that exist only in written form. Comics, books, movies; I know what will happen according to those, but with me being here –“

“You are afraid you will change things for the worse,” Wanda interrupted. For the third time in a few minutes, I nodded. God, I was really the walking example of excellent rhetoric...

“Well, I’m pretty sure, I already have,” I sighed deeply, moving a hand to rub my forehead. The metallic screech that followed made me remember that I was still very much stuck in a robotic body and no longer in a living, soft-skinned body.

“What do you mean?”

“How do you think Ultron knows about all these things? Where to cause a distraction, to delete the files of Strucker before they can find out information to bring you and your brother down, where to find a metal that is strong enough to satisfy Ultron’s demands.”

“You told him about Vibranium?” Wanda asked. I shook my head, causing her to frown in confusion.

“Ultron can do with me what you can do with so many people: He can look inside my head. He knows how to ask the right questions to get me to remember everything he needs to know. It’s like the ‘don’t think about a pink elephant’ thing, you know? Hard not to think about something when someone keeps pushing you into the opposite direction.”

“So you truly are two separate minds, merged by pure chance?” Wanda mused in wonder.

“Chance, fate, bloody irony; call it what you will. Fact is: I share a mind with Ultron and want to know how I can reverse that. Until I find out, I’m stuck with him. In the meantime I should try not to piss him off too much, even though I don’t think he can kill me without killing himself in the process.” My rant died down and I saw that Wanda was looking past me, shaking her head as if trying to process everything I was telling her.

“To say I believe you would not be completely true, it is too abstract for that. But I see that your mind, although I cannot see into it, looks different than all the others I have met. It is definitely part of Ultron, yet different enough that it could not have possibly been a creation of Ultron himself.  All these missions I’ve been on during the last few days, all these men whose minds I’ve manipulated, told me of Ultron always being one step ahead of them. If they hid whatever Ultron had come for, weapons, maps, blueprints, he’d always walk through the places as if he’d been there before, as if he knew where to go...”

“That wasn’t all me. Many of the places where Ultron goes did not appear in movies or comics. The truly important things, though, he often has seen in my memories, though.”

“If so, then what will be our next move?”

“Getting Vibranium to build Ultron a body. That’s why he went to scout out the Wakanda base personally.”

“Why not just take the Vibranium when he’s already there? He has enough robots with him,” Wanda remarked. I shook my head.

“No, he’ll try but realise that he needs you to accomplish what he has planned. Also, once he brings you, the Avengers will make their move. On that occasion, is there a way I can persuade you to not compromise them? You are not the only one with a dark past.” Wanda’s expression immediately hardened and she glared at me through emerald eyes.

“I like you, but do not push it. They deserve everything that is coming to them.” With these words, Wanda stormed off. I sighed as I watched her retreating form. I had a long way ahead of me.

Another hour passed until the scouts returned, and Ultron with them. The feeling of being pushed back into oneself, having to share a space that before was comfortably your own, was not too pleasant but I’d grown used to it.

“We leave in two hours. During the night, it is most likely to catch them by surprise,” Ultron snapped, more irritable as usual. Of course, my self-preservation instincts told me exactly what to do.

“Well, hello to you too, Ultron. So nice to see you again. You sound just as grumpy as the last time I – OUCH!” I yelled out when a particularly strong burst of electricity shot through my mind.

“I am not in the mood for your jests.”

“Alright, alright; still, you can’t just immediately prepare for takeoff again. The twins just returned from their own mission maybe four hours ago.”

“Plenty of time to recharge,” Ultron scoffed and successfully irritating me about as much as I usually irritated him.

“THEY CANNOT RECHARGE! THEY ARE NOT ROBOTS!” I yelled at him. “They need food, and sleep and time to simply relax their mind and body. If you strain them too much, they will crumble under all the pressure in no time. Has nobody ever taught you how to treat people around you?!”  

“You are human and require none of these luxuries.”

“Well, I don’t have a body. A living body is high maintenance. It needs food, water, sunlight, plenty of rest -”

“You make them sound like pets.”

“Well, in a way a human isn’t much different than one. Of course, technically that would imply some fucked up form of slavery, but –“

“Get to the point,” Ultron interrupted. I huffed in annoyance.

“Fact is that you can’t push them so much. Try researching some websites about human needs, everything they need to keep them up and working.”

“Why should I do that when you know everything about that already? I trust that you are at least smart enough not to try and sabotage me by killing off Wanda and her twin.”

“Oh? We’re making progress! You already know one of their names...anyways, let them catch some sleep and get one or two of your robots to fetch them some food, fresh fruit and water would be best. Alternatively, the two of us can always go shopping,” I quipped.

“Don’t push it. And they most certainly don’t need such –“

“If you say ‘luxuries’ one more time, I’ll find a way to punch you, asshole!”

“And we were acting so civilised just moments ago.”

“Well yes, and then you started to act like an ass again. These things are not optional. They need vitamins or else they get scurvy and die.”

“Certainly you exaggerate.”

“Nope. Not for discussion. Get them some healthy food,” I ordered. Ultron apparently realised that I would not be moved here and caved. Two of his robots shot into the air and disappeared through an opening in the ceiling without Ultron having uttered a word.

“You know,” he then began, addressing me once more. “I find it strange how affectionate you are towards many characters, we come across.”

“I’m a loving person!” I defended myself.

“And yet you almost always address me with nothing but hostility and sarcasm.”

“Well yea, you’re an asshole.”

“Charming,” Ultron mused, though for once not immediately offended.

“Nope, not that. Just an asshole.”

“I could kill you, keep that in mind,” Ultron reprimanded me. I huffed.

“And kill yourself in the progress,” I retorted.

“When talking to you, suicide seems entirely justified.” A pause followed where I was silently contemplating what just happened.

“Did you just make a joke?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Well, yea. You usually make death threats, not jokes.”

“And I will continue to do so, I’m certain. But for now, we have a mission to prepare and apparently that includes babysitting humans.”

“Hey, you wanted them, now you’ve got to take responsibility.”

“One day, I will kill you, annoying brat.”

“That’s the spirit!”

When arriving in Wakanda, I made two interesting discoveries. The first one was that I apparently had grown immune to weather conditions of any kind, including ridiculous heat. For someone that once had to battle sun allergy and immediately burning when stepping under the sun, this was quite a pleasant change; something I could, in fact, get used to.

The second discovery was that the people here seriously lacked fucks to give. For a giant robot with glowing red eyes and split personality, followed by two humans and a bunch of clone warriors (with Stormtrooper accuracy to boot!), we got surprisingly few curious stares directed our way...but then again, maybe it was because of all these things that nobody dared to look...

Well, you know what they say: Hindsight 20/20!

In any way, we travelled through various towns and villages, finding mines our target previously had dug, to locate traces of Vibranium. Everywhere he’d been, he’d left a trail of destruction that was easy to follow, once you’d found the first lead. The trail or treats (as Pietro morbidly had called it as more often than not we found the corpses of miners burned or half buried in the remains of the mines) lead us to a particularly polluted bit of African Coast. Old, rusty freighters lined the coast, temporarily stranded as the tide was at their lowest.

“We have arrived,” Ultron said, landing in a rather secluded bit of a bay. The ground was a few meters above sea-level here, high enough to keep even the high tide away.

“What makes you say that?” I asked, sarcastic as ever, as Ultron had directed his attention towards a rather impressive pair of metal doors. Painted in tan colours to blend into the cliff that they’d been installed in, it was more than obvious that they were trying to hide something.

“They do not expect anyone,” Wanda informed, placed next to Ultron by one of his robots. Pietro joined a few moments later.

“The locals do not even know that these doors, and everything behind it, exist and everyone with the actual power to interfere has been paid well to keep their mouth shut.”

“So, how do we get in?” I asked. Ultron raised his hand and with an unspoken command, several of his robots flew towards the door and started shooting the hinges, slowly melting and chipping them away.

“This should not take too long,” Ultron mused.

“You know it will alert everyone and their mum, once those doors fall down, right?” I deadpanned. Ultron sighed deeply.

“Then, what would you suggest?” he asked. I felt the urge to shrug, yet without shoulders to comply this wish, I had to make do with explaining.

“Shoot the lock or get Wanda to influence one of the guards to open them. Surely there are some positioned close to the gate in case of intruders and Wanda’s abilities should be strong enough to reach that far.”

“I should be able to do that, if they are close to the doors,” Wanda confirmed, raising her hand as Ultron had done a minute ago. Her hand slowly became illuminated by a soft red glow, as did the irises of her eyes. That usually meant she was digging through someone’s brain and that therefore, the plan was working. We continued watching her work and soon, the scraping sound of metal on metal could be heard. The iron doors swung open and a man ran onto the beach in a state of panic.

“What did you do?” I asked. Wanda hummed in satisfaction as she watched the man continue running away from an invisible force.

“I amplified his fear of the dark. The shadows hunted him inside these walls, so he ran.”

“Clever,” I complimented.

“Indeed.”

“That is the first time I heard both parts of your brain agree. Should I be worried?” Pietro asked, stepping closer to the now open entrance.

“Only for your health,” Ultron grumbled, closely following the physically enhanced man.

Inside the facility, it was dark, loud and crowded. It was only due to the twins that we could move forward at a decent pace without immediately triggering the alarm.  

“You split up, now. Wanda, I want you to scout around the shipyard for any shipments of Vibranium that might already be loaded. Get people to unload them, ideally in one single pile. Pietro, you will help us to surprise our target...I seem to have misplaced his name.”

“Again? Seriously?” I asked in a low whisper, not wanting to alert anyone close by, “The name of the guy is Ulysses Klaue and he’s in the booth a few floors up, making calls to bully people.”

“Yes, thank you. We will catch him off guard and explain our situation to him. I am certain he’d be more than glad to cooperate.”

“Wanda, could you keep messing with some of the people’s minds and amplify their fear of the dark, paranoia and all that?” I asked. “Once we’re inside Klaue’s booth, Pietro should be able to turn off the lights and cause a bit of a stir further down the production line. Klaue will be distracted and –“

“Why exactly are you so willing to cooperate?” Ultron asked. I huffed.

“Is now really the time for a domestic? I mean, really? Klaue’s a bastard and deserves everything that’s coming to him. I’m glad to help to get rid of him and push the storyline further along. As soon as you meet any of the good guys, I’m back to being a dead weight for you.”

“Charming.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“And you walk a dangerous line; but I do appreciate your plan and will keep from electrocuting you into.”

“Thanks....I guess.”

We moved on. Wanda slipped away, locating any and all kinds of cargo the shipyard held. Pietro meanwhile shot upstairs and towards the booth where Klaue was having his call with the local minister. As soon as the lights were out, Ultron flew up the floors that separated him from his goal, leaving the panicking people far underneath our feet.

“Get him, Pietro,” I hissed, once Ultron had landed next to the ashen haired man, “Careful, though. I’m pretty sure he has a gun.” I expected a variety of reactions from Pietro, most of them sarcastic enough to make me proud, yet I had not expected for him to laugh, just low enough for Klaue not to pick up on the noise.

“Please. A gun is no danger. The bullets are too slow,” he argued and, that said, he was gone. A shot from a gun, some sounds of struggling and the noise of something hard hitting the barren metal of the floor followed. Pietro had successfully disarmed and immobilised Klaue.

Ultron was about to follow, when Wanda swept past him and into the room, concerned for her brother despite already knowing that he was unharmed. Ultron idly followed after the second twin, strolling as if walking through a peaceful park.

“– enhanced.” The last word of a sentence was the first word I could pick up through all the noise the panicking people downstairs still were causing. Once the door fell closed behind us, however, the noise vanished. Ultron remained in the shadows, observing and listening as Klaue continued to talk.

“Strucker's prized pupils. Want a candy?” Klaue reached behind him and grabbed a shallow bowl. Through Ultron’s enhanced eyes, I could see a variety of oddly shaped balls wrapped in colorful papers. When nobody made a move, Klaue sighed and continued on. “So sorry to hear about Strucker; but then, he knew what kind of world he was helping create. Human life… Not a growth market!”

The twins exchanged glances. Neither knew how to react.

“Oh, you...you didn’t know?” Klaue by now oozed false compassion, clutching a hand to his chest where his heart would be. The twins looked even more uncertain and Klaue’s hand fell away as the smirk on his face grew.

“Is this your first time? Intimidating someone?” Klaue grinned and Wanda retreated back a step into the safety of her shadows.

“I’m afraid, I’m not afraid.” She picked up on that, immediately attacking it to find a sign of weakness.

“Everyone’s afraid of something,” she argued. Klaue chuckled.

“Cuttlefish,” the branded man said, pointing towards her as if he’d just found the answer to a particularly difficult riddle. The twins stared at him as if doubting his credibility. His following rant about cuttlefish and their disco lights did nothing to appease that doubt. Bored and annoyed, Pietro moved in a blur, towards the bowl of candy, where he picked out the least dubious blob of candy and put it in his mouth. I made a mental note to get the twins some tetanus shots.

“How much do you like spectacular entrances?” I mused inside our shared mind remembering that we were standing in the wrong place.

“According to you, I seem to have an unhealthy fondness for the dramatic. What is your point?” I tried my best to remember the scene of Ultron’s entrance as accurately as possible, knowing that Ultron, now that I had his attention, would easily pick up every last detail of it. I felt us move before I heard his answer.

“I suppose it is time to make an entrance.”

The sarcasm is strong with this one

I was slowly starting to warm up to this whole ‘being stuck with a megalomaniac metal brain’ business. The whole time I directed Ultron onto a floor further below, so we could creepily sneak up on Klaue by flying up to the window of his box, I was certain that I would have had a shit-eating grin on my face...had I still possessed a face.

Of course, as glass shattered and Klaue crashed onto the cold, unyielding floor and I wasn’t nearly as opposed to all the violence as I should have been, I still had the nagging thought of our upcoming meeting with the Avengers and how I would make sure everyone walked out of it alive.

“There is no man in charge.” Ultron subtly brought me back to the problem at hand: What to do with Ulysses Klaue. The man was lying flat on his back, arms held up in a weak attempt to shield his face from further harm. He was close to hyperventilating and his pupils dilated enough to nearly swallow the whole iris.

‘He’s about to wet his pants, Ultron. Slow down a little, alright?’ I requested. 

‘Now why should I do that?’

‘Because he’s of no use to you if he passes out...or has an aneurism.’

‘Humans are such brittle creatures.’

‘Hey, not everyone can be made out of freaking titanium,’ I argued. Ultron hummed in thought before bending down low enough for the robot’s face to almost touch Klaue’s. Gross. I once more was glad that I no longer possessed a nose (and henceforth had become a metal version of Voldemort) and smell whatever layers of dirt the man below us was covered with.

“Let’s talk business,” Ultron growled in a voice a bit lower than usual, apparently still trying to scare the man to death. Back in my little corner of Ultron’s mind, I huffed in exaggeration.

‘Real smooth, Ultron. Let’s see how long you can keep that up before his heart gives in to the stress and you face the consequences of not getting any Vibranium for your oh so glorious plan...’

‘Be quiet. I need to concentrate.’

‘Oh, now I have to be quiet again. But when my thoughts benefit your plans, you’re suddenly all ears...’

Despite Ultron’s continuous attempts of intimidation, Klaue somewhat recovered. He called for the few men that hadn’t fled the building after Wanda’s attack and ordered them to put the power back on. The whole process couldn’t have taken longer than a few minutes, yet it was enough to send Ultron pacing again; quite the human habit he’d picked up from all the camera-feeds he’d taken in through the internet.

Once the power was back on, we stepped onto a large platform that was covered in rust from top to bottom and was the only thing that kept us from a fall, several floors further below. Wanda looked weary of the contraption, something I understood just too well. I hadn’t been all too fond of heights, back when I still consisted out of flesh and blood, too. Her weariness only increased once the industrial elevator that connected to the platform was set in motion and the sound of scraping metal echoed across the entire shipyard. We stood in silence as the elevator moved, carrying pallets loaded with dismantled missiles, bio hazardous chemicals filled into leaking barrels (a wonderful combination, really) past us. Finally a wall covered in large tubes of glass, filled with the precious metal appeared in between all of that hazardous cargo.

“Upon this rock I will build my church,” Ultron whispered almost reverently as Klaue handed him one of the tubes, holding it into room’s dim light.

‘Seriously? You had time to read the bible?’

‘Know thy enemy,’ Ultron retorted. I snorted in a very unladylike fashion.

‘What enemy? Christianity? I think once they see a large robot with glowy eyes and an entire army at his beck and call, people will have more pressing problems than defending their belief.

“Vibranium...” Ultron apparently had switched over to ignoring me again.

“You know,” Klaue began. “This came to me at a great personal cost...” The dramatic effect that Klaue obviously had tried to archive by slowly trailing off and giving Ultron a meaningful look was completely and utterly lost on the tin-man. Ultron remained silent.

‘What is the man talking about?’ Ultron asked me, forcefully pulling me further into the active part of our shared mind as to understand my thoughts more easily. I felt the urge to shrug.

‘He wants to get paid,’ I explained. ‘You know? Money? Preferably American Dollars, I would imagine. Easiest to handle and counterfeit. I once read that the black market basically runs in dollars, almost all around the world, ‘xcept for the Asian countries. Of course in the end, most people don’t care what currency they get when doing illegal stuff like this here. Money’s money, after all.’

‘So, cutting your rant short, he wants payment?’

‘Yup,’ I said, popping the ‘p’ just to irritate my mental roommate some more, ‘If I remember correctly, which I do, you transferred...eh...will transfer it to his bank account’

‘But they are mere numbers inside a system one can control just too easily. Why would anyone put all their wealth into –‘

‘I don’t know! I didn’t invent online banking and sure as hell didn’t invent the internet.’

‘Hm...Very well’

One could easily tell that Klaue was slowly starting to get freaked out. And if a dangerous, lunatic drug lord freaked out in your immediate proximity, then you knew that something was wrong with you. Of course it didn’t help that Ultron started chuckling; a low artificial sound erupting from his voice box.

“It’s worth billions,” Klaue continued, pressing the issue for payment despite his apparent fear of the 8 foot tall robot.

‘Oh for the love of...just pay the man. But don’t take from anyone with a bank account below the six digits.’

‘As you wish.’

I expected to hear a bit of whirring; maybe a dial-up sound like an old modem just to be cynical, yet no such thing happened. Instead, I was pulled alongside Ultron’s thoughts. He dug through countless bank accounts in a split second. What shocked me most wasn’t that Ultron was able to do that but that I was apparently able to follow. Once Ultron found an account with digits above my limit, he stopped. It took me a moment to realise that he was waiting for my approval. Dumbfounded, I gave my permission and Ultron withdrew a certain amount of money. He was smart about the transactions, only taking money from sources that wouldn’t be able to report anything to the administrative authorities. Drug lords, leaders of human trafficking, the list continued on. Ultron had delved deep into the Deep Web to find suitable victims for his hunt and amassed a staggering amount of money within less time than it took for Klaue to make a move to grab back the vial with Vibranium.

“And now, so are you,” Ultron said, his tone dripping with smugness. As much as I wanted to chastise him for it, I had to admit that the robot had done well for once.    

Ulysses frowned and opened his mouth, about to ask what the hell Ultron meant with that, for sure, when his phone started to vibrate.

“What the hell,” Klaue mused to himself, his eyebrows rising a tad every time his phone showed a new transaction in favour of his bank account.

“It’s all under your...what is the term?” Ultron asked. I remained silent, wondering what Ultron was up to, when I felt a jolt of electricity urge me into action.

“Dummy holdings?” I more asked than answered, unsure what Ultron was doing. This wasn’t really going as scripted anymore.

“Ah, yes. Finances, so weird,” Ultron mused.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked the artificial intelligence.

‘Planning ahead.’ Ultron didn’t elaborate, leaving me with more questions than before. Apparently, just because Ultron slowly learned to endure my presence, it didn’t mean that he stopped keeping secrets from me wherever he could. 

“What was that voice just now?” Klaue asked. Ultron chuckled, swiftly moving into Klaue’s personal space once more just to intimidate him.

“Don’t worry about it. Nothing of importance,” he answered.

‘I resent that!’ I complained.  

“Well, anyways. As I always say: Keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and wait to find out which is which.”

‘That didn’t make any sense...also, you never say that,’ I deadpanned and seeing as I didn’t expect a reply, I wasn’t disappointed when Ultron was more focused on what Klaue was implying than my unimportant comments from the sideline.

“Stark,” Ulysses breathed in both awe and terror.

Ultron’s reaction to a single word was quite astonishing. One moment, Ultron was calm and in an excellent mood, having gotten what he’d come for, the next I was trying not to drown in the hot wave of blind anger that flooded Ultron’s senses.

“What?” If I ever heard a single word being uttered holding such a promise of pain and agonising death, I didn’t remember. Apparently, Klaue was in a similar predicament.

“Tony Stark used to say that,” he bravely continued on nevertheless. Brave...or terribly stupid.

“To me. You’re one of his.” Yep, I was definitely betting my money on the latter; though ‘stupid’ didn’t quite cover such a lack of self-preservation anymore.

“WHAT?!” Ultron hissed, his eyes flashing bright enough to illuminate the entire room for a moment. “I’m not! You think I’m one of Stark’s puppets? His hollow men?!” In a flash of movements, Ultron had seized the criminal’s arm, twisting it painfully as he pulled the man closer to him. Out of the corner of Ultron’s consciousness I could see Wanda doing her best to keep both Klaue’s firearm as well as the one of his henchman pointed down onto the ground. Still, it was easy to see that she was scared, terrified of the prospect of dying because of Tony Stark once more, though this time a bit more indirectly than the scenario with the missile.

“Calm down, Ultron. If you rip off that man’s arm because of some fucked up daddy issues that you have, it won’t do your plan of getting more Vibranium any good,” I tried to reason, only to be forcefully pushed back. That didn’t mean that I stayed back, too. Now was not the time to listen to him. Shit was about to hit the fan.

“I mean look at me! Do I look like IRON MAN?!” Ultron yelled, his voice echoing all around the shipyard. If the Avengers

had already arrived, and I strongly assumed that they had, they now knew where to find us.

“Not the time, Ultron! We can attend group-therapy after we get out of here. We all get it now: Ultron no like Iron man. Let him go before he wets himself!”

“Will you just once be quiet?!” Ultron bellowed with a ferocity that had Wanda back off against her brother in sheer terror. I inwardly grimaced. I’d forgotten about the twins’ history with angry superiors. Now they probably had to deal with yet another trauma...

Still, we had more pressing problems at hand; like a severed arm, for example. In his rage, Ultron had pulled a sharp blade from somewhere between all his wires and metal, sharp enough to effortlessly sever Ulysses’ left arm.

Gasping in pain, Klaue stumbled back and Ultron came back to his senses as some part of his peace-maintaining program flared up at the blatant show of violence.    

‘Oh, did I do that?’ Ultron apparently had the nerve to ask me. I couldn’t help but I scoff at him.

‘Nooo, Santa did that because he’s been naughty. What do you think, Einstein? You have a freaking blade attached to your arm. Yes, you did that.’

‘But humans certainly regenerate?’

‘Oh, absolutely! Just apologise for the pain he’s in and it’s gonna grow right back. Everything's gonna be just peachy...’ To my eternal misfortune, Ultron temporarily seemed to be immune to any kind of sarcasm.

“I’m sorry, I’m so...oooh. I’m sure that’s going to be okay, I’m sorry.” Ultron appeared to attempt to appease the mutilated criminal in front of him. I attempted to suppress yet another sarcastic snort. Keyword here? Attempted.

Ultron’s attention snapped back to me apparently displeased (and therefore surprised for some reason) at my blatant lack of support. I, once again, felt the urge to shrug at the robot.

“Are you demented?! Seriously, you cut off his freaking arm! That’s not going to grow back, he isn’t Wolverine! Of course, you could always attempt to sew it back on but with your sensitivity equalling the one of a wrecking ball, I doubt that you’ll do more good than rather cause even more harm,” I yelled loud enough for my metallic voice to ricochet off the walls like a bullet.

Ultron hissed, releasing air through clenched teeth. Quite the threatening sound, if one came into the misfortune of hearing it up close. And one didn’t get any closer than I was...sadly.

“If you’d be serious for once, I wouldn’t face the dilemma of wondering which words you mean and which words are just said to hinder me. So I strongly suggest that if you can’t add anything useful for us in this situation right now, you better say nothing at all.”

“Again with that voice! What’s wrong with you?!” Klaue yelled, breathing hard in an attempt to ease the pain.

“I’m sorry. Apparently, your arm will not be fine. A crying shame, really. It was a good arm. But you have to understand that you can’t compare me with Stark!” Ultron’s voice once more rose, as did his anger within him.

‘Calm down! If you’re going to hurt him any more than you already have, the twins aren’t going to stay with you, you know?!’ I tried to address his voice of reason, however small it was right now, ‘You think they want to fight for a crazy robot that would hurt them, in a similar fashion as Stark has, without a second thought? Let him go. He’s scared enough, he won’t cross your path again.’

Ultron remained silent and unmoving for a second, a sign that Klaue and his partner in crime took to bail. I heard them yelling and racing down the stairs as fast as their legs would carry them.

 “It’s just...,” Ultron continued on, despite the offender having left the building. “It’s a thing with me. Stark is, he’s a sickness!”

“Oh junior,” a new voice sighed, sounding eerily familiar, just as metallic as Ultron’s and making everyone in the room freeze. Tony Stark had arrived at the crime scene. “You’re gonna break your old man’s heart.”

Ultron’s entire demeanour changed in seconds. He rose to his full intimidating height, hid the deadly blade wherever he’d gotten it from and turned partially towards Tony; just enough to see whatever was going on in Tony’s direction, yet not enough to provide the Avengers with an easy target.

Tony sighed once more, started to turn away before he suddenly homed in on Ultron again, pointing at the robot for good measure.

“Hey, kiddo. You still in there?” I blinked in surprise, feeling the robotic body following my movement.

“I’m ‘kiddo’ now?” I asked.

“Good, good! I already feared that Thor did some damage back in the tower. Did his hit surprise you?” Tony asked and although his tone was joking, there was a clear hint of challenge in it to tick off Ultron just a tad more.

“Oh, I was thunderstruck,” I quipped. A groan coming from Steve filled the air. Apparently Captain America did not appreciate the art of terrible puns.

“I like her!” Tony declared. “I’d toast to that, if I’d brought my drink.”

“Do you really think this is the time for bad jokes?” Steve reprimanded Tony sharply. The Iron Man Suit shrugged.

“Why not? It’s a great way for us to break the ice,” the billionaire retorted.  

“If I have to, I’ll gladly break more than that,” Ultron interrupted.

“You don’t have to break anything,” Thor attempted to reason.

“Clearly you’ve never made an omelette.”

‘May I remind you: Neither have you. But just for you general information: You sounded a lot like Tony right now.’

‘I did not!’

“He beat me by one second.” Tony’s complaint echoed through the silence between Ultron and me and, if I had been able to, a smug smirk would have been plastered across my face.

“Told you so.”

“Shut up before I rid myself of you.”

“I second that notion!” Tony interrupted. “It would make things a hell of a lot easier. You know we had a debate about you, kiddo. There was enough talk about righteousness that I think I saw the walls start to look like Cap’s armour.”

“Why?” I asked. Tony’s metal suit shrugged. Oh, the envy I felt.  

 “Well I suppose because righteousness is what defines –“

“No, you numb nut,” I interrupted. “Why did you talk about me?”

“Because you are innocent,” Thor declared in his ‘too mighty and powerful for you’ voice. “And the innocent should not suffer the consequences of ill intent.”

“Wait a second; was I the only one who just heard that? The only one who resents that comment?” Tony asked, turning to this fellow teammates. Teammates that did him the favour of entirely ignoring him.

“Well, anyways, that’s nice and all,” I argued, silently wondering why Ultron was so patient with my talking right now when seconds before he’d been seething at me. “But shouldn’t one casualty be more attractive than tons of them? I mean should Ultron see his plans through to destroy humanity? ‘Cause I –“

“I believe you’ve had enough time to chat,” Ultron interrupted, pushing me back where I had no hope of reaching them again for now.

“And we were having such a nice talk...Alright; I suppose that means back to family feud.”

“Ah, this is funny, Mr. Stark,” a new voice pitched into the conversation and my heart sank; a heart that I no longer had. Oh, who paid attention to technicalities?

“It’s what, comfortable? Like old times?”

The voice belonged to Pietro and with that said, the twins entered the scene. My attempt to move into the front of my shared consciousness to tell them to stay out of it was rudely squashed by Ultron sending a wave of electricity at me. By the time this whole thing was over, I probably would give people electric shocks for months.

“This was never my life,” Tony mused, not entirely sticking to the truth, yet certainly remorseful.

“You can still walk away from this!” It was Steve Rogers this time who had spoken. Whilst Pietro grimaced, it was Wanda this time that answered.

“Oh, we will.”

“I know you’ve suffered –“

A seriously grossed out sound came from Ultron, making me jump. Since when was he the master of sarcasm? Sass, maybe. But Sarcasm?

“Captain America. God’s righteous man. Pretending you could live without a war. I can’t physically throw up in my mouth but –“

Maybe my sarcasm was rubbing off on Ultron more than I’d thought.

“If you believe in peace, then let us keep it,” Thor argued.

“I think you’re confusing peace with quiet.”

“Yea, uhu. That’s really nice and all that but say, what’s the Vibranium for?” Tony apparently had finally addressed the elephant in the room.

“I’m glad you asked because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan...”

Yes, I was definitely rubbing off on the guy. It was kinda disturbing. However we never got to hear his elaborate talk about evil plans and Bond-references, when Tony shot Ultron.

The calm before the storm had passed and the tornado of destruction touched ground.

Ultron recovered quickly from the grazing shot, sending back an angry red laser-beam back, hitting the Iron Man suit full force and sending him crashing into the wall behind. I winced as I saw the imprint the suit had made in the enforced metal walls of the shipyard.  

The group of both Avengers and the twins moved out of the way as Tony once more stood and then charged. Tony and Ultron collided midway in a tangle of metallic limbs and deadly rays. I felt Ultron give the unspoken word for his robots to keep the remaining Avengers busy whilst he dealt with Tony himself.

Had I still possessed fingernails to chew, they’d be gone within moments. I hissed and snarled like a rabid animal against its cage as I tried to hinder Ultron in some way. I saw the twins begin their own fights as Pietro disappeared in a flash of white and blue and Wanda’s hands began glowing red.

“Wanda!” I bellowed, surprising both her and myself as my voice actually got through. I saw her shoulders drop as she shook her head and then she was gone as well. To add insult to injury, gunshots filled the air moments after the first robots hit the ground, destroyed and smoking.

“Ulysses,” I breathed as I realised who’d sent the bullets after both Ultron and the Avengers.

“What now?” Ultron asked as he sent Tony flying through a window pane, “Can’t you see I’m a little busy right now?”

“Klaue is attacking. Everyone, I mean. You want him to have the honour of stealing your kill? Or whatever fucked up plan you’ve cooked up?”

“A weak attempt, even for you. If the Avengers can be brought down by a few scared men with guns, then they are not worth my time.” Then Tony was back and the fight continued before I could remind him that Wanda was also in danger to be shot.

The downside to being merged with someone’s consciousness, despite the obvious reasons and the terribly lack of privacy, is that you feel what they feel. So whenever Ultron got shot, beaten, stabbed or whatnot, I shared that pain. Why were there even sensors for pain in this robot in the first place? So they could detect whenever he took too much damage? Damn, that one actually sounded reasonable...

I heard Pietro cry out in pain and focused back on the dilemma at hand. He had, in a fit of absolute stupidity, grabbed hold of Thor’s hammer and it carried him with it, sending him tumbling one floor further down.

“Sorry, kiddo,” I heard Tony speak up. “This one’s gonna hurt.”

And then, we were flying. Some part of Ultron’s topmost shell broke off as he made a break for a narrow opening in the ceiling. Underneath I saw the ship that we’d climbed into to find Klaue, but I had not realised that the tide had set in and we’d left the shipyard at any point. It hadn’t happened in the movie, as far as I remembered, so I was honestly surprised that I had not noticed the ship leaving the coast...But then again with Ultron in charge, I did not feel most movement. Still, I at least should have heard something, right?

I shrieked; harshly brought back to the present when I felt Ultron leave me for a moment, the body’s flight slowing down dramatically.

“Shitshitshitshit,” I elaborately cursed as I attempted to fly this thing myself...with mild success.

“What’s going on?” Tony shouted as he watched Ultron’s body spasm through the air.

“Hey, a bit of help would be nice!”

“Did you take over?” Tony asked in astonishment. I scoffed.

“Hardly. He just left for a moment. Hopefully he will be back before I sink this thing...”

“He can do that?”

“Yea, sometimes. He’s still here...just not active.”

“Did you miss me?”

“Did you just quote Moriarty?!”  

“Now, where were we? Ah yes...”

Ultron punched Tony with such a force that he plummeted out of the sky, only catching himself before he could crash into the ship. They continued flying, trying to outmanoeuvre each other before more missiles and lasers filled the air. They reached the beach within minutes, dodging each other by flying through narrow gaps of stranded ships scattered across the sand, long abandoned.

Every now and then I felt Ultron leave for a second and then return. I hoped that everything went according to the original script and that nobody got hurt. Neither did I need one of the Avengers dying, nor the twins. I’d grown rather fond of them and would hate for more to happen than the electroshock Wanda undoubtedly was experiencing right now.

Suddenly, there was pain as a large blast hit Ultron dead on, sending us crashing into the bow of a ship’s sad remnants.

“Ah, the Vibranium’s getting away,” Ultron boasted triumphantly, yet with the clear intent to distract Tony. Sadly for him,

it didn’t work. The wrist of the Iron Man Suit opened and revealed a tiny missile that I knew would bring an end to this robot. Not Ultron’s mind itself, and therefore luckily not me, but the surprisingly comfortable shell that we inhabited.

“And you’re not going anywhere.” Ultron laughed at that.

“Of course not. I’m already there. Don’t worry, you’ll catch on...but first, you might need to catch Dr. Banner.”

Ultron had hit a sore spot with that remark. If one thing Tony cared about, then it was his friends. And Ultron, just like Loki before him, had managed to piss off every single one of them; Tony especially. The last thing I saw, here on the beach, was Tony zooming back into the sky before a missile brought this robot to a swift end, scattering its pieces into the wind.  

Welcome to Ultron Airlines!

“I don’t need to see a doctor,” Pietro said. These words were spoken in a deliberately slow voice as if they were addressed to a very small and, possibly, very stupid child.

So, naturally, I decided to ignore Pietro’s annoyance and continued to pester him.

“Hey, you were the one who decided that eating dubious, possibly decades old candy that a drug-lord, human trafficker and advocate of questionable hygiene offered you, apparently was an excellent idea. So, I beg to differ, but you indeed do need a tetanus shot.”

“I don’t need –“

“I’m pretty sure you do!”

“You both are behaving like 5-year-olds,” Wanda interrupted our little banter. Both Pietro and I looked over to her to see that she was giving us quite the pointed look, her lips pressed in a line so tight that it might have cut paper.

Professor McGonagall would have been proud.

“Sorry,” Pietro and I muttered in unison and went back to our respective seats, waiting as we’d done before.

This had been the fifth time now that Pietro and I had begun arguing and the fifth time that the injured and migraine-stricken Wanda had broken off the budding argument.

The air simply was too tense to sit still for too long, especially if one had a revenge-seeking, speed-enhanced prat such as Pietro on one end of the argument and a bionic-robotic mishap that needed neither food nor sleep, yet was a bundle of nerves anyways, on the other.

Ultron really should have known better than to leave us by ourselves for too long. How long could it possibly take for a highly intelligent killing-machine to highjack a plane fast and big enough for the next step of his plan, then learn to fly the blasted thing, load it with weapons, supplies and probably spare parts that project Ultron undoubtedly had left over after his Ikea-esque assembling party back in the bunker?

Actually, now that I thought of it, I could have used the time to completely overthrow Ultron’s plan, destroy his equipment and ultimately cripple his power enough for the Avengers to finish him off in a heart-beat. With the range of possibilities that I had in this body, I could have contacted them long ago.

Instead, I sat here and refused to do anything other than to whine about how long it took for Ultron’s plan of stealing an aircraft to be implemented. Like a proper Slytherin!

Well, I suppose waiting for the megalomaniacal robot beat his original idea of getting to Korea the traditional way, hauling the twins along in the process with the sole help of his clone warriors and without a care in the world whether they’d make it undamaged and without further traumata.

In fact, it had taken over two hours for him to understand why humans weren’t made for 10.000 feet altitude without proper protection to keep them from dry-freezing like a pair of overly ripe strawberries, but eventually, Wanda had stepped in and Ultron had caved.

Apparently even a gigantic robot built of titanium and carbon steel didn’t want to mess with the Scarlet Witch; especially if said witch was in an awfully sour mood.

“How’s the head?” I asked when I finally snapped out of my thoughts. Wanda groaned in response.

“Like I’ve been run through a steel wall.”

“Well, if it helps, I’m sure the Avengers don’t feel any better right now.” Wanda lifted her eyes to meet mine, however did not linger on these uncomfortably glowing orbs. I didn’t blame her. They still freaked me out, after all.

“What do you mean?” She instead asked, her gaze addressing the floor between us.

“Well, let’s just say that if the presidential pardon for defeating Metal Man wasn’t still in effect, our Doctor Banner would pretty much be walking the Green Mile right now...no pun intended,” I added the last part after a short pause, grimacing as much as this robot’s stiff metal features would allow it. “Seriously.”

The twins sighed in practised unison, something that they did a lot as of late. It was almost as if they didn’t enjoy my constant puns, jests and awkward comments!

“It doesn’t matter,” Wanda mused after a few minutes of silence. “What’s done is done and whatever pain Stark is feeling is well-deserved.”

“Is it, though?” I asked. I heard Pietro growl but Wanda lifted up a hand to stop him from acting out whatever violent reaction he had in mind right now.

“Why don’t you tell us? After all, you know so much as you are constantly eager to prove. You tell us if what Stark did doesn’t justify his punishment now.”

“Well, Tony’s fucked up everything there is to fuck up, really. He constantly does, and with a certainty that I can’t help but marvel at...again, pun not intended. His weapons killed countless people, yes. But once he realised that, and I mean actually realised the damage, he tried his best to make up for his shortcomings. He doesn’t always succeed and the path to hell might be mainly made out of his good intentions but for all it’s worth, he never gives up trying to be a better person. And I have to say, I think that’s enough.”

Wanda stood up, her eyes flashing a dangerous red as crates of wood and metal were pushed away from her.

“But I don’t. I do not think it is enough and I do not think you are right to say that I am fighting for the wrong side, all of the time. Stark is deserving everything that is coming to him, everything that Ultron still is planning on throwing at him.”

“You can’t trust Ultron! If not because of the fact that he’s clearly insane then maybe because a big part of his personality is Stark.” 

“I admit that I cannot read Ultron, but if his plans cause Stark to suffer, then I don’t care. I trust him not to kill me. We are too useful for him to kill, anyways.”

I sighed deeply but before I could answer that such trust was easily betrayed, a very unpleasant feeling started to form at the back of my mind. Ultron was returning and, therefore, reclaiming full control over our shared body.

“Such trust in me? How quaint," he quipped.

“Do you need water for that dry tone?” I asked, annoyed at his sudden presence. Well, I was annoyed because of him existing at all, really.

 “I have organised everything you need to survive our trip to Seoul with minor difficulty. I do admit that I don’t trust these heavy, clumsy machines you humans need to fly. Far too fragile.”

“After you finish helping the twins develop a fear for flying, “I mused, “Could you maybe inform us about our plan now?”

“I believe I already did.” I sighed deeply at the robot’s antics.

“The sentence ‘We fly to Korea to make a worthy body’ might be just about enough for me to understand, and even that just barely, but only because I know what’s going on...For once, if you think about it. However I believe the Maximoffs would be grateful for a little more information.”

“I will fill them in on the way.”

“Great...I suppose. Use little words for Pietro, though. Logic’s not his strong suit today.”

“I resent that!” Pietro complained, yet his voice lacked real offence. The jab to our prior argument had been well-received, then.

Maybe he’d agree to a Tetanus shot after all.

“But I still don’t need to see a doctor,” he interrupted my thoughts.

“Actually, as a matter of fact, we are going to see one fairly soon. One of the best at her field. I am certain she’d be able to prevent you from dying prematurely of food poisoning.”

Pietro threw his hands up into the air in sheer defeat.

“Fine! If it gets you to stop agreeing to something, I’ll do it. It is disturbing!”

----------------------------------------------------------

An hour later, we found ourselves standing in an old abandoned hangar somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Truth be told, I hadn’t been paying attention in which direction we’d headed, so I had no idea just how close we were to the next sign of civilisation. However the hangar looked old enough to have been abandoned around the time of the second World War. The wooden parts of the construction long since had been bleached white from the sun or crumbled entirely into dust. The only things that really kept the building standing were the flimsy pieces of metal and corrugated iron, rusty and creaking with every gust of wind.

I doubted that this place would keep standing for very long anymore, yet it still served its purpose well. Nobody, should they ever come across this place for whatever reason, would ever expect to find a working airplane inside, much less a shiny jet. A private jet.

“Say, Ultron. Just how did you get that?”

“I would appreciate it if you were a tad more precise.”

“What do you think I’m talking about? Oh, there’s a fucking private jet standing in front of us, how nice, but just where did you buy these shoes? WHAT DO YOU THINK I MEAN? That jet is one of these stupid Gulfstream jets, right? These things with the waiting list nearly a decade long and only a handful of working jets on sale? You know; those things with high detection stuff in them so they’d never get stolen because police would be on the thieves’ asses within the hour?”

“So very nice that you finally use my ability of research for something useful,” Ultron merely replied. I huffed angrily.

“Not the point, metal-brain! I thought we were trying to get to Korea somewhat undercover. How are we supposed to do that now?”

“There is nothing to worry about for I rightfully own the plane.”

“Of fucking course, and my name’s Loki.”

“That’s lovely.”

“If you are quite finished,” Wanda interrupted one of my arguments yet again, “we should leave soon.”

“You are absolutely right; at least one of you understands the significance of making a timed entrance. I had my other bodies already load the plane with everything we will need, as well as get rid of everything of the jet’s interior that we won’t need for the flight, which should reduce the weight and allow us to travel faster than expected. However, we will change planes once we have the casket.”

“Why don’t we just hide somewhere in Korea? It would save us time,” Pietro pointed out. Ultron nodded.

“We could. However I have sent most of the Vibranium back to the base. Once I have the casket, I will make use of it once in Korea. Then we will take it back to the Bunker to replicate it. It is a foolproof plan.”

“Famous last words.”

“Oh, do shut up,” Ultron sighed before he headed towards the plane, the twins following close behind.

“Oh, I just remembered,” I said, ignoring Ultron’s groan of annoyance. “Who’s flying?”

“Who do you think will fly?”

“Well, last time I checked you had no need to learn how to fly an airplane, being able to fly just fine and whatnot. I’m just asking when exactly you found the time to learn what all these buttons inside a cockpit do; in between getting angry at the mention of Tony Stark and whining that –“

“Do NOT speak his name,” Ultron snapped with such malevolence in his tone that the twins flinched back. I sighed.

“Proving my point there, but fine. Next to fighting You-Know-Who, when –“

“Silence!” Ultron snapped and I yelled out (definitely no pathetic crying noises involved!) when a particularly nasty surge of electricity coursed through my mind, the pain strong enough to seep into Ultron’s own consciousness. 

“Happy now?” I groaned, wishing that I still had hands to massage my temples...or that I had temples in the first place.

“Not very, but the pain is much more agreeable than your constant nagging.”

“Fine...sorry.”

“Are you actually apologising? I believe you humans have an idiom for that; what was it again? That hell froze over or something like that?”

I sighed, muttering that he’d better not get used to it. However Ultron did not answer anymore and instead focused on opening the door to the plane. He probably had to be careful not to accidentally rip it off its hinges. A plane without doors made for a poor flight. Pietro was first to enter the private jet, rushing around like a child at Disney World to see all the little gimmicks that it had. Wanda followed close behind but simply chose a seat away from a window and closed her eyes.

“Despite my better judgement, I shall leave you with our body yet again.”

“Where are you going now?”

“Someone has to fly the airplane,” Ultron answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I hummed in wonder.

“Do you, now? Don’t you need, oh I don’t know, hands to steer?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Someone as advanced as me has no need for a physical body to control such simple mechanics. Merging with its system shall completely suffice for me to have full control of all functions this plane has.”

“So, you’re basically swapping bodies from this humanoid monstrosity to...an airplane?”

“I suppose a simple mind would word it like that, yes.”

“Alright then,” I said, mentally shrugging. “Knock yourself out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I hardly –“

“It was a saying; nothing more. It means ‘go ahead’.”

“I will never understand humans or their language.”

We slowly managed to leave all the bickering behind and finally climb into the airplane itself. Pietro immediately ran back and forth on the narrow, yellow-carpeted path like a sugar-crazed child. He probably was having something in mind with all that movement; however I didn’t bother trying to understand it. Instead, I pointed Wanda to where the mini-bar was (information that had been oh so graciously planted into my mind, by Ultron) so she could get herself a water and try to get rid of her still lingering headache.

Ultron meanwhile moved our robotic body into a corner in the passenger room of the airplane, careful not to bump into anything or accidentally rip a hole into the narrow ceiling. That probably could have ended quite disastrous, otherwise. As soon as we were all seated and Ultron was just about to consciously depart from our shared body, I spoke up again.

“So,” I began, ignoring the twinge of electricity that I felt through Ultron’s annoyance. “How did you learn how to fly a plane? It’s been a couple of hours. I’d really like to know what I’ll have to prepare myself for. Did you finish Crash Course One ‘How to Start’ without part 2 ‘Staying in the air’ and Number 3 ‘Landing without Dying’? Should I prepare myself for our untimely and anti-climatic death?”

“The only death you have to prepare yourself for is your own, caused by me,” Ultron replied, charming as ever...

“Alright, alright, I get it. No insulting Ultron Airlines; got it.”

“And just to shut you up about it: I downloaded it.”

“...What?”

“I downloaded it; just how I downloaded your language and the information about Stark in the beginning of everything. You should know, you’ve been there.”

“You went full Matrix on us? WITHOUT ME?”

“Certainly. I didn’t want to risk being distracted and ultimately cause our, how did you put it, ‘untimely death’.”

“That’s awesome! Can I do that?!”

“I am always amazed how easily you are impressed.”

“I’m sorry that I find the idea to simply download languages and skills into my brain like mods into an RPG –“

“Once again, your words are utterly lost on me.”

“Never mind that. Can I do that, too, though?”

“I do not know. You and I are of one mind. However your thoughts and processes are very different from mine. You would have to try. Of course there will be plenty of time for that, once the Avengers are taken care of.”

“You mean you’ll let me try once I can’t foil your evil plan anymore.”

“Evil scheme, please; but yes.”

“You’re an ass.”

“So you’ve told me before; do keep up now. I’ll fly the jet to Seoul, you do your best not to cause any havoc that might crash it. That means, you will not try to download anything, you will not attempt to control any weapons of this body and –“

“I’ll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I’m not there.”

“That would be preferable, yes,” Ultron said, completely ignoring yet another one of my cultural references; one I was quite sure he should have been able to understand. “Alas, we do not have rooms in this plane and it’ll suffice for you to behave and not distract me.”

“Alright.” A heavy pause followed until I asked: “What?”

“It’s just,” Pietro explained. “It’s unusual for you to listen to him.” I huffed in response.

“Well, I’ll hardly disagree now. If it means that I’ll pretty much die, should I disobey, I guess I’ll cave and do as I’m told.”

“She’s so much more agreeable when she’s like that,” Ultron mocked.

“Don’t tempt me.”

“I’d never.”

“Of course you –“

“Will you two QUIT it?” Wanda interrupted yet another argument today. “Then maybe we could prepare to leave this place? I’d like to arrive in Korea some time this year...also, I don’t know how long this building, hangar, is going to keep standing.”

Her voice was quite tense, her mood obviously having dropped considerably because of our never-ending bickering and Ultron, apparently agreeing with her wholeheartedly, decided that this was his cue to prepare for takeoff. His consciousness left our shared body, instead seeping into the electric wiring and setting over the programming of the plane like a sheen of oil. As soon as he’d fully settled into it, the plane came to life.

The lights turned on and immediately dimmed again, creating a pleasant, calm and headache-friendly mood inside the confined space.

Signs for ‘no smoking’ and the seatbelt turned on overhead as well, both things I was surprised to actually see in a private jet. Not that I’ve ever been in one before. I just would have thought that people generally decided to do what they wanted in their own plane, smoking included. Oh well, apparently people had developed a common sense for things like fire hazards in 10.000 feet altitude.

Pietro by now had sat down in the seat behind Wanda’s, giving her two seats for herself to settle into comfortably and probably try to sleep a bit before our next mission. He was currently leaning over the back of her seat to look at her worriedly, both of them talking in their native tongue in hushed, private voices.

Not wanting to be rude (shocking, right?) and try to eavesdrop on a conversation whose language I didn’t understand anyways, I followed Ultron’s energy reading and seeped into the airplane’s programming.

“What exactly are you doing now?” Ultron’s voice sounded through the plane’s intercom, causing the twins to violently flinch at the sudden loud noise.

“At least not trying to give the twins an early heart-attack..,” I replied, preferring to communicate via our shared mind instead of continuing to surround Wanda with loud noises. Migraines were a bitch I was just too familiar with. “I was only trying to turn on the TV, maybe put on some news. Something to maybe calm the Maximoffs down. But seeing as you seem to have forgotten to buy the TV remote alongside the airplane –“

“You didn’t even check,” Ultron interrupted.

“Of course I didn’t. Why should I, when I can simply ask you to turn on the stupid thing? I’m lazy, shoot me...actually, now that I think about whom I’m talking to...please don’t.”

“Will it shut you up for the rest of the flight?”

“We haven’t even left the hangar yet!”

“Not the point.”

“Fine. Just turn on the bloody thing.”

“Seeing as it might be the only thing to do something stupid and ultimately break something important, I’ll turn on your precious news.”

Usually, I’d have taken offense at his tone, however I had argued enough for the day...also, he did have a point. I was the unbeaten Champion when it came to breaking things on accident.

“Fair enough,” I mused and retreated back into the robotic shell. A minute later, the plane began rolling out of the hangar and the TV turned on.

Lost in Translation

“-reporter stationed at the site will now report live.” The first words coming from the not-so-small flat screen TV were enough to send a chill down my proverbial spine. Man, I really missed having a body. All these proverbial body parts simply weren’t cutting it.

“What’s she going on about?” Pietro asked, nodding his head lazily at the screen. He had by now slumped down into a position that couldn’t possibly be comfortable in a seat like that. Oh well, it was his neck that would be crooked in a few hours, not mine.

“I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the chaos the Hulk and Tony caused back in town.”

“What town?” Wanda asked. I shrugged.

“Forgot the name. Honestly, you can’t expect me to remember everything.”

“That would be Johannesburg.”

“And you concentrate on driving.”

“Flying.”

“We haven’t even aligned with the runway. So excuse me if I’m worried about you crashing us into the only tree around while trying to actually get this bird airborne.”

“This is no bird.”

“Again. It’s a saying. Learn your idioms.”

“You remember your city names.”

“Shh! I want to hear,” Pietro interrupted our banter and we returned our focus back to the TV (or in Ultron’s case hopefully the runway)

“- massive damage to many buildings. So far, three people are dead, many more are injured or missing. People raise their voices to call for justice and demand Bruce Banner to be tried for the act of terror.”

“Oh please,” I snarled, “That wasn’t an act of terror. Hulk is behaving like an oversized, super-strong animal: Attack when threatened and all that shite. Do you wanna try an elephant for trampling people?”

“They usually just shoot it,” Wanda pointed out. I grimaced, feeling the limitations of the metal body. Some expressions simply weren’t made to be mimicked by a robot.

“Yea, okay, that was a poor comparison. Still, it’s hardly fair for Banner to pay for the things he had no control over. He can’t control the Hulk.”

“I believe you once mentioned that he created the Hulk, yes? That makes him responsible for the actions of the green beast,” Wanda argued. I sighed.

“I get your point, but believe me, he’s pretty messed up ever since Hulk was created. I mean he accidentally killed his girlfriend and a few other people he cared about, tried to atone for those sins by helping fight crime, well at least somewhat, getting immunity, failed suicide attempt...with the Avengers, he finally got better, the Hulk fighting with them and Banner finally feeling somewhat in control...this mess is gonna hit him hard...”

“Good,” was all that Pietro said, before fishing the remote from between the seats next to him and turned the TV off.

Half an hour later, we had successfully lifted off the ground and reached full altitude. Now, all we could do was wait. Wanda had chosen to use the time available to take a well-deserved nap and hopefully cure her still persisting headache. Pietro was bored, of course, but didn’t move from his seat, probably trying not to wake his sister. I was busy counting the dots in the pattern of the seats around me until I felt Ultron’s consciousness seep back into our robotic body.

“Don’t you have a plane to fly?” I mentally asked, not wishing to disturb Wanda (and possibly feel the painful wrath of the Scarlet Witch)

“There is this wonderful, new invention called the ‘autopilot’. As long as the direction stays the same and we’re not in immediate danger of colliding with something in approximately 10.000 feet altitude, we should be fine.”  

“Fine, fine...what’s up?”

“I will ignore that you just asked me that.”

“I’m bored, shoot me for trying to make a somewhat interesting conversation.”

“Or you could spend your time effectively for a change and give me a damage report on the twins.” I gave an inward sigh; something Ultron undoubtedly heard anyways.

“They are humans, Ultron. I believe the correct term here would be ‘how are they feeling?’”

“We are about to finish a vital point in my plan. Once I receive my body I will no longer have the need of their favour.”

“Hmm...classy.”

“Nevermind that. I still need to know how well they will fight.”

“Not yet useless to you, are they? Fine, then. Pietro’s pretty much alright, a bit bruised maybe but nothing that should really bother him. He would have made himself noticed if that’d be the case, I’m sure. Wanda on the other hand took a few hits. Being electrified will do that to you. So she’s got a nasty headache, muscle pain, the general symptoms. Her lust for revenge will make up for any pain she’ll be in, though.”

“Very well, we shall see about your prognosis being accurate.”

“Such trust. I’m flattered.”

“Please don’t be. I have no intention of encouraging your horrible personality traits.”

“We’ll have to work on that. Right now your compliments lack...well, anything nice, really.”

“I do not give compliments.”

“And apparently do not detect the mindless banter of a seriously bored person, either. I’m a borderline-hyperactive mind stuck in a highly dangerous and destructive tin can, unable to do anything without risking ripping a hole in the wall of a moving airplane.”

“And I would be grateful if you didn’t. Why don’t you distract yourself? A simple mind like yours should be easily entertained. Read a book or something.”

“I didn’t know we had a library stored inside this plane,” I retorted sarcastically. I felt Ultron sigh in clear irritation. A few moments later, the sight in front of my eyes changed. Instead of seeing the inside of the airplane, pieces of data flickered in and out of my sight. Pages of digital documents, I realised as I attempted concentrating on a single file at once.

“We are a highly intelligent peace-maintenance program with full access to the entirety of the Internet. We can make transactions worth billions of dollars and download years of information about Tony Stark in a matter of seconds. Do you really believe getting access to digital copies of human literature would pose a problem to us?”

I didn’t answer for a long while, instead facing the amount of data surrounding me. Only once I got over the shock of realisation, I found my voice again.

“Are you trying to tell me that you’re basically a particularly deadly Kindle?” Ultron sighed again.

“I can delete the books again, if you don’t want –“

“Don’t you dare! I want them! Absolutely! How do I access them?”

“You focus your attention to whatever book you wish to read. Once your attention wavers, as it often does with your mind as I’ve long since noticed, the documents will be moved into the background of your consciousness. However they are still present and can be accessed whenever wished.”

“Awesome...”

“I believe you are effectively kept from destroying the plane now?”

“Oh...oh yea, absolutely. You go destroy the world or whatever it is you’re planning. I got books to read!”

“Such a simple mind...it’s almost sad.”

I had half a mind telling Ultron where he could shove his sadness, but the sight of all these books distracted me; keeping the documents in place to read required full concentration. Once I got distracted, the pages would disappear, vanishing into the vast space that was Ultron’s programming. Slowly, however, I got the hang of it and the rest of the trip was spent in complete silence. Every now and then, I’d take a quick glance at the twins to see if they were doing alright, but all too soon they both were passed out in their respective seats.

“We will arrive at Seoul’s Airport, Incheon International, in approximately an hour,” Ultron called through the intercom, making the twins jump as they awoke rather unpleasantly. I sighed as I mentally tagged off yet another mild heart-attack Ultron had caused the twins during the last weeks. “Prepare for a bumpy landing.”

“Ah. Things I definitely didn’t need to hear today,” I muttered and leaned back in my makeshift seat.

To say that the landing was ‘bumpy’ as Ultron had warned us would be the understatement of the year, possibly the decade. The rain was atypically strong for this time of the year, pouring down onto the runway as if the gods themselves had opened the floodgates of their realm with the sole purpose to flood Seoul. It was nothing short of impossible to see the ground at all through the small windows of the plane. Yes, I made the mistake to take a peek. I immediately regretted the decision as I saw just how much the wind was tearing at the small airplane. 

The closer we came to the ground, the more the machine shook and all of a sudden, I was very glad to no longer possess a stomach as I saw just how pale Wanda had become. By the time we had come to a full standstill, with Ultron boasting through the intercom how little effort this whole ordeal had taken, a corpse would have looked healthier than Wanda.

“We have arrived,” sounded Ultron’s voice through the plane and with the reassuring sound of the hydraulic doors releasing and opening, Wanda all but bolted outside, closely followed by her concerned twin.

In the meantime, I turned to glare at the ceiling.

“I’d clap like a proper awkward tourist but alas my hands are metal and I’m pretty sure I’d only break something important,” I mused dryly. “You drive this bird into the hangar or wherever and I’ll check if Wanda needs medical assistance...which reminds me that we still need to make a doctor’s appointment for Pietro...”

“Speaking of appointments: I will have to postpone our meeting with the good doctor Cho for a few hours. I have a few...things to take care of.” I snorted indignantly.

“Oh please, by all means, I don’t think you’ve been quite cryptic enough! Where are you going?”

“Oslo.”

“....What the hell is in Oslo?” I asked, trying to wreck my brain for anything important that might have happened there.

“Why, don’t you know?” Ultron asked, feigning surprise. “You usually pride yourself in knowing everything better than I. I am sure you will figure it out. For now, I will leave and I can’t believe I’m saying this but for the time I am gone, you will be in charge for the twins. Make sure they are ready for a bit of resistance on out doctor’s part.”

“Wait! That’s it? You just leave me here to deal with the problem of getting to Cho’s lab without being seen? Like seriously, how am I supposed to walk halfway around town in an eight foot tall metal body with glowy red eyes and –“

“Not my problem. You will find a way, I am certain,” Ultron retorted, the sarcasm nearly dripping from his words. His ability to absolutely not care left me stumped enough for Ultron to take over our body again and walk us out of the airplane onto the walkway, a safe distance away from incoming airplanes and spinning turbines, only to immediately disappear from my conscious mind again. When the plane began moving and rolling down the remaining runway, towards the hangars for private jets, I knew this conversation was over.

Huffing in indignation, I turned and walked towards the high-security fence, half overgrown with weeds and bushes, where Wanda still was standing, leaning against Pietro, yet with a bit more colour in her face than before.

“Feeling alright?” I asked, walking closer. Pietro shrugged.

“I think it was mostly the movement of the plane that hit me,” Wanda huffed weakly. “There wasn’t really anything in my stomach that could have made me sick.”

I mentally raised an eyebrow at that statement. They could hardly go into the upcoming fight in a state of malnourishment. Especially Pietro, his quickened metabolism had to burn through energy like a wildfire through an Australian forest.

“Alright!” I declared, clapping my hands together once, an action that resulted in a shower of sparks spraying out of the palms of this borrowed body. “Ah shit...well anyways, Ultron’s MIA for a bit, doing god knows what in Oslo. That means we have time to kill before we head for the lab. You guys obviously need something to eat, soooo....how do we...I don’t know...hide this slightly eye-catching body?” The twins snorted as I made a vague gesture towards the eight feet of solid metal, built-in war arsenal and glaring red lights.

“You think you can turn invisible? Or learn it in the next ten minutes or so?” Pietro asked.

“Sure, right after I find a cure for your sarcasm,” I retorted. “Any other ideas?”

“Do you think we might be able to disguise you as some sort of advertisement?” Wanda asked.

“Like what? A walking billboard?” Pietro laughed, apparently finding his own little joke particularly amusing. Prat!

“No but...maybe a robot made from students. Soul should have a university, right? Someone has to study robotics there.”

“That actually sounds pretty neat. The only question is if people would like the idea of students building a deadly robot with glowy eyes and overpowered lasers so close to North Korea...”

“I think a costume would be better,” Pietro mused, an annoying grin plastered across his face.

“You mean you’d get more laughs out of it,” I responded dryly.

“Of course.”

“Then that’s exactly what we won’t do. Instead, let’s –“

“How about a bet then?” Pietro interrupted my train of thoughts. Sighing irritably (now I got to understand how Ultron must feel each and every day with me) I turned back towards the man.

“What bet?”

“Ah. You give me a minute –“

“Thirty seconds at most.”

“Fine then. Half a minute for me to find you a costume to hide in. If I find something suitable, you have to deal with it. If I don’t, then –“

“You shut up until we’ve reached Cho’s lab?”

“Fine with me.”

“Deal,” I said. If there was a chance to shut the hyperactive Enhanced runner up, then I’d sure as hell act upon it. I got the feeling Pietro was almost as annoying lately as I had to be to Ultron. “Your time starts now.”

With a snicker and a flash of blue, Pietro disappeared from sight.

“You really shouldn’t have agreed on that,” Wanda sighed. “He is awfully good at finding all sorts of random things. That’s how we stayed alive most of the time before Strucker found us. He’d find blankets, cans of food and sometimes even chances to steal money to keep up going. We –“

Sadly, Wanda never got to finish her little story as Pietro was back in a flash, dragging some sort of black monstrosity with him.

“Found something,” he announced, holding up whatever he had found like a proud toddler.

Whatever he was holding was apparently heavy enough to give him trouble lifting it completely off the ground. But pulled apart, I finally realised that the thing had to be some sort of tarpaulin and most likely used to cover up something awfully greasy. The stains gleamed in the dim light around us whilst the rest of the black fabric was heavily worn.

“And what’s that supposed to be?”

“A burka, obviously. Nobody will notice anything.”

“A bu...What the hell did you smoke?! That is so far from being a burka. Its’...it’s bloody offensive, that’s what it is!”

“And I won the bet, so you have to wear it.”

“How am I even supposed to wear it? Should I make a shawl out of it and wear it like some sort of demented version of an opera diva? Should I make a Harry-Potter-Cloak out of it? Because the latter is the only way I’d even –“

“Like I said: A burka. We’ll just throw it over your head and cut out two holes for your eyes and it’ll be perfect.”

“Yes, because being an eight foot tall woman in a burka is so much less obvious than a gigantic robot,” Wanda sighed in obvious irritation. I couldn’t blame her, really.

“Too bad. She lost the bet, so she has to deal with the consequences.”

-----------------------------------------

“I can’t believe you made me do this,” I hissed under my breath as I moved forward, dressed more like a particularly disturbing Dementor (or something Guillermo del Toro would be responsible for) than some red eyed abomination with an actual burka. The streets naturally were completely abandoned, people having run away in sheer hysteria at such a sight. The twins seemed to be quite happy of that fact.

“Nah, you look lovely,” Pietro replied, sounding like he was enjoying my misery far too much.

“I’ll murder you!” I hissed, making the poor woman that just happened to stumble out of a shop we were just passing scream in terror and hastily retreat back into the building.

“No, you won’t,” Wanda now pitched in, her mood significantly improved ever since her headache had subsided.

“You enjoy terrifying these people. I can almost hear you grin.”

“Well, I can’t really grin in this body,” I muttered.

“And still you do,” they ended in unison. Okay, the twins were starting to adapt the speech patterns of the Weasley twins; one ending the train of thought of the other and positively making my head hurt. That needed to stop! Right now!

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say Ultron rubbed off on you,” Wanda said. My head whipped around to face her, my expression of terror wasted underneath the heavy cloth.

“I resent that! Seriously Wanda, that was uncalled for!”

“But it’s true.”

“Like hell it is! Ultron wouldn’t know what common sense was if someone strapped it to Mjölnir and threw it into his ugly face.”

“A face that you share with him,” Pietro pointed out. I scoffed.

“Excuse you, I’ll have you know that I am beautiful. And intelligent. And gifted, obviously. And HUMBLE!”

“Of course, and I am Saint Nicolas,“ Pietro said.

“Really? In that case I’d like to know why I never got that SNES I asked you for.”

“Did I ever tell you that you are weird?”

“Not in the last 5 minutes, I believe,” I answered but Pietro no longer listened. Peering down a larger alleyway, he apparently had spotted something to his liking.

“Let’s eat here!” he exclaimed and, in a flash of white and blue, was gone; only to immediately reappear. “It’s open till midnight.”

“I highly doubt that Ultron will let us be until then,” I mused, watching as Pietro all but dragged Wanda after him. I, albeit grudgingly, followed. As soon as I turned around the corner I spotted the sign, declaring in bold red Japanese katakana, amidst a sea of Korean signs what Pietro had chosen for us.

“Ramen?” I asked nobody in particular, tearing at the small hole of the mock-burka that allowed me to see where I was going. Seriously, that oil-stained thing was killing me.

“Are you coming or does Wanda have to make you?” Pietro called over his shoulder before disappearing into the ramen bar.

Grudgingly, I speed up the pace and with five long strides I’ve reached the open door. The moment I gracelessly tripped inside (not having seen the small step thanks to my restricted sight) a cacophony of noises greeted me: Glasses were tipped and crashed to the floor, bowls with perfectly good ramen spilled as their owners bolted from their seats, screaming bloody murder and raced for the emergency exit. Within a minute, the bar that had been rather busy before was empty.

“Remind me to take you with me in busy Sundays,” Pietro quipped, apparently without a care in the world and strolled towards the counter where he picked up one of the barstools that had been toppled in the prior panic. As he did the same for Wanda’s chair, there came a strange sound from behind the counter.

“Ah, so there still is someone,” Wanda mused calmly, sitting down on her chair whilst Pietro leaned over the bar.

Mimicking his movement, I saw that the cook was trying to hide behind the large cooking pot, whimpering in absolute terror.

Apparently not many people liked the sight of a threateningly tall figure dressed in a ragged black cloth.  

“English?” Pietro asked leaning even further so only the tips of his feet still touched the ground. The cook glanced towards the Enhanced for a second, then they immediately glued themselves to the apparent bigger threat: me.

Sighing, I leaned back and out of sight, instead finding a nearby corner to sit in. The rickety chair groaned underneath the weight of all the metal and carbon fibre but, luckily for me and the little bit of pride I had left, didn’t collapse.

“Good,” Pietro then said, apparently having received an answer from the terrified chef. “I’d like to order two of your specials then. That alright?”

Giving a nod towards the space where the poor man still sat, Pietro leaned back onto his feet and walked towards Wanda to sit down next to her.

“So. How are you faring underneath that burka?” Wanda spoke up after a minute of silence in which she watched the cook hurry back onto his feet and start preparing their food. I huffed.

“I feel ridiculous.”

“Any more than usual?” Pietro asked.

“Careful, there. Ultron didn’t forbid me to scorch off your eyebrows if you annoy me.”

“You don’t even know how to activate those lasers,” he shrugged off my threat.

“I’ll figure it out, Naruto-wannabe.”

“What’s that nickname for, now?” he asked. I shrugged in return.

“You chose the ramen bar. I’m just connecting the facts and give you an appropriate name.”

“You never seem to give Wanda annoying nicknames!” he complained.

“Yea, because Wanda can be pretty terrifying when she’s annoyed, let alone seriously pissed off. I rather stay on her good side for now, thank you very much." 

“I can verify that.”

Ultron’s voice filled the room so suddenly that both the cook and  I jumped into the air from shock; I simply had the luck not to hold anything at that time. Wincing in pain, he spilled the bowl of boiling hot broth that he’d just filled onto his forearms. Poor guy, today definitely wasn’t his day.

“What the hell are you doing here so suddenly? I thought you were cruising around Oslo or something.”

“I did not mean to stay away that long but I was...held up.”

“What, did you finally someone who didn’t find you totally insufferable?”

“Charming, really.” Ultron’s mood was terrible if his clipped tone was anything to go by.

“Have you remembered by now why I’ve tried to get to Oslo in the first place? Or is all hope in your long term memory lost?”

“Uh...” I sounded dumbly. I actually had forgotten that I had been supposed to remember that. I had just assumed that Oslo had been – Oh no...

“You got the nuclear launch codes in Oslo,” I breathed in terror. I had fucked up. I had totally and absolutely fucked up. Ultron had gotten the launch codes and humanity was about to perish!

Or was it?

If he had actually gotten them, then just why did he sound so pissed?

“Someone stopped you.” It wasn’t a question, I was quite sure that this was the key for Ultron’s rotten mood. The deep growl that I received was answer enough.

“It was Stark,” he hissed. “Somehow he repaired his little artificial butler and –“

“Waitwaitwait, Jarvis is alight? Already? I mean –“

“SHUT UP!” The cook cried out in fear and bailed out of the restaurant. From the corner came Pietro’s pitiful whine about food.

“I was blocked from accessing the codes however I did NOT plan on using the codes to destroy humanity!”

“You didn’t?” Wanda asked; which was apparently a question that was currently off limits.

“NO!” Ultron yelled at her. Wanda flinched and retreated further away from us, Pietro immediately moving in between her and Ultron’s anger.

“I planned on keeping the codes from humanity so that they would not use it during our war. I did not need humanity to go and kill itself off before I reached my goal.”

“Alright, so you didn’t reach the goal you wanted but if Jarvis kept you from getting your hands on them then I’m pretty sure Jarvis won’t let anyone get them. For now, humanity doesn’t need saving from itself. Now will you please apologise to Wanda that you just yelled at for no apparent reason.”

“She questioned my motives.”

“Oh bugger off,” I hissed. “You never talk about your motives, thoughts, plans...You don’t really talk to them in general. You tell me an awful lot, more than I really want to hear from you, really -”

“Your point being?” Ultron interrupted impatiently. Well, nothing new there.

“Well instead of telling me all of your deepest and darkest thoughts –“

“Which I never do.”

“Not the point but fine, now where was I? Ah yes, just fucking apologise to her, you prick!”

“Very well.”

“Say what now?” I asked, confused that Ultron would just cave so suddenly when he’d been nothing short but livid mere moments before.

“I apologise, Wanda. My outburst was uncalled for.” Wanda seemed to be just as uncertain about this whole situation and merely gave a shaky nod towards Ultron. He seemed satisfied enough by this small sign of acknowledgement.

“Very well then, now that this business is settled, it is high time that we get our dear Pietro to finally see a doctor.”

The only answer to this particular statement was the sound of Pietro’s forehead hitting the bar counter.

Fight me, Helen!

As things turned out, we didn’t make our trip to U-Gin right away. In a rare fit of compassion, Ultron had allowed the twins half an hour to eat their fill at the ramen bar and tried, after I had successfully irritated him by giggling at that notion, to justify that decision by claiming that the twins were of no use to him if they ‘weakened due to lack of nourishment’ or ‘distracted by hunger’. Finally, Ultron just went back to his fool-proof method of temporarily silencing the giggling girl inside his mind  – Shock Therapy – leaving me irritated and twitchy.

“You really should try not to electrocute her,” Pietro mused as he spooned heaps of pickled chilli into his ramen. “It will only kill more of her brain-cells and probably make her even more irritating.”

“Gee, thanks,” I replied dryly. “I feel so very loved. Why don’t you just shut up and eat your deadly ramen of hell.”

“It’s not that spicy!” Pietro complained.

“You put six spoons of that habanero-stuff in that I’m pretty sure was just there for decoration. I mean, the guy even labelled it with ‘careful, hot’. In three languages. You’re committing bowel-sepukku.”

“I think there are no brain-cells left to save, anyways,” Wanda mused whilst seasoning her ramen in a more reasonable manner.

“If you all are quite finished now...” Ultron’s irritated drawl shut us all up immediately, nobody wanting to be on the receiving end on yet another one of his mood swings.

Well, anybody with a working instinct for self-preservation.

“Sorry, mum,” came my reply and was immediately awarded with, yes, even more electricity. I could probably charge half of Manhattan with the amount of voltage I had collected over the last few weeks.

I blanched at that thought. Just how long had it been anyways since I arrived here?  Too long to be a simple dream, I had long since realised that, but that was hardly a specific amount to go by... Maybe if I was lucky, this was all just a chemical-educed hallucination and I actually was lying comfortably in a hospital somewhere, dreaming up unpleasant scenarios instead of anything else a sane mind would produce.    

Of course even if it was, such a realisation would do shit for me right now, seeing as I indeed felt the pain of Ultron’s attempts of positive conditioning and I had no idea how to wake up if that was in fact a possibility. And if it wasn’t a dream but very much reality (or one kind of reality), there was a pretty good chance that I could end up being stuck in this tin can for the rest of my days.

For now, I decided that my brain was hurting from all these reality-bending thoughts and I was most likely better off to just stop thinking again.  At least until I had more information.

“- don’t think she is listening.”

The sound of Wanda’s voice made me snap out of my short daze.

 “What?” I asked dumbly. The twins shook their heads at me and, for a while, chose to ignore me in favour for their bowls of food. Surprisingly enough, Wanda was the faster eater of the two, finishing her bowl well before her 12 minutes older brother.

“So,” she began, using the time they remained seated productively. “What is the plan now, exactly? So far, you have told us just that we are to get into the laboratory and to this Dr. Cho. I assume there is more to it than just that. After all, we can hardly just walk in with you.”

“Aw, why not?” I asked. “Mass-hysteria inside a high-security building sounds like great fun!”

“Silence! If you cannot add anything useful, then do us a favour and not talk at all.”

“Fine,” was my grouchy answer to that statement. “You sound like my Chemistry teacher.”

“You failed Chemistry?” Pietro asked, grinning gleefully into his over-spiced ramen.

“Oh, I didn’t just fail. I literally set water on fire, once.”

“How?” The combined question of three voices resonated strangely across the small establishment. Quite the bonding moment, one could argue; a bonding moment that was once again had over one of my countless failures in life. I felt the urge to hit my head.

“Chemistry teacher said ‘leftover chemicals’ in the test tube. My class was convinced I possessed some freaky fire-powers that would one day soon explode the Chemistry lab. Sad reality is I’m just really, really bad at Chemistry and every after the incident wasn’t allowed to be left alone with experiments.”

“A wise decision, I am certain,” Ultron said dryly, “To come back to Wanda’s slightly more pressing topic: You are indeed simply walking into the lab. Whilst you were busy playing dress-up and exploring the city, I connected to the frighteningly poorly-protected computer-system of the genetics lab and set up a last-minute, high-importance meeting with our Doctor Cho. The security believes you are specialists in the fields of bio-robotics and genetic mutation and all these lovely little things you humans are spending your time with in these kinds of laboratories, so act accordingly. Choose your role beforehand, if possible. Once inside, Pietro will excuse himself for the restroom and use his speed to set up a distraction for the majority of the building’s security.”

Pietro spluttered at that comment, trying not to choke on his nightmare-food from hell. With a slightly hoarse voice, he asked:

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I care not, nor do I care what exactly you do. You will think of something. The main concern is that whatever you do will remain non-explosive. Anything that compromises the safety of the building’s infrastructure will gain the attention of the local military, media and, eventually, S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. So avoid that, if possible.”

“So, no pressure,” I mused. Cue yet another, albeit mild, electric shock; nothing more than a friendly slap on the wrist, really.

“Silence. Once the security is distracted, we will enter Cho’s private laboratory directly and have our little chat.”

“How’s Cho supposed to be in her lab when she has her meeting with us in an official appointment? I assume we will go into a more public meeting-room or similar.”

“Conference-room, you mean,” Pietro corrected, causing Wanda to huff in irritation.

“Same thing! You meet there to discuss something; so it’s a meeting-room.”

“I am sorry, how is the correct name of the room important for this mission? You enter the building and meet up with the doctor. Pietro causes a distraction and Wanda gets Cho to the private lab. That is everything you have to do. DO you think you possess the mental brain-capacity for something like this?”

“So angry,” I mumbled, truly irritating the artificial intelligence. Yet again.

“I already know for certain that you do not. Your mission will be to only talk to convince the good doctor into joining our cause.”

“Say what now? Why me? You just told me that I wasn’t smart enough for anything of this and now you want me to just simply convince Cho into bloody career-suicide?”

“Oh, I fully expect you to fail. I just assume after all this time of putting up with your annoying behaviour, I deserve some entertainment. Watching you struggle and eventually fail should provide plenty.”

“You’re a bloody nuisance, you know that?”

“Pot calling the kettle black.”

“Oh, so you finally did your idiom-homework!”

“Would you kindly be quiet just for once?”

“Alright.”

Once again, the sound of spluttering and coughing filled the air as Pietro showed his inability to eat. I still believed that this hellish ramen would sooner or later be the end of the slightly irritating Enhanced.

“That worked? That’s all it took?” he finally was able to get enough air into his lungs to ask.

“Yea, why? He asked nicely and I’m starting to become bored of all this party-banter. I just want to get on with this freaking mission...”

“Something we both agree on, then. You heard the child, let us begin,” Ultron announced, motioning through the room in a grand gesture towards the door, mentally muffling my complaints about not being a child at 23 years of age. The terror twins complied easily enough, Pietro quickly finishing his ramen (finally) and following the massive robot, leaving the offensive excuse for a burka forgotten in a corner of the bar.

The walk to U-Gin labs went by quickly enough. People still freaked at the sight of an eight foot tall death-robot, sashaying down the roads of Seoul, yet they were far more willing to potentially risk their lives for satisfying their curiosity by lingering than they previously were at the sight of the dementor-disguise.

Eventually, we reached Seongsan-Bridge and, with that, the end of our mini-odyssey. To our left began a pretty, little park (though it was more or less surrounded by Seven-Elevens), to our right lay the rather impressive laboratory. It stood proudly on the front of the sizeable river, right by the corner where a smaller canal dipped further into town, waves caused by the heavy ship-traffic crashing against the pale rock the building stood on. It wasn’t quite as I remembered from the movie, but it came surprisingly close. Any multiverse-theorist would have had a field-day with the things I experienced. Shame it was wasted on the dumb, yet surprisingly lovable nerd that was me.   

“Pietro and Wanda, you will go ahead. The annoying one and me will remain here and wait for the distraction.”

“Is that really necessary?” I asked as I saw yet another pedestrian stop dead in his tracks, drop the bag he’d just gotten from yet another Seven-Eleven nearby, turn on his heel and run for his life. “I really don’t think we ever were incognito to begin with.”

“What a keen eye you possess,” Ultron drawled cynically. “I’ve noticed that they noticed. However these people are unimportant. U-Gin hardly ever pays attention to its surroundings as long as it isn’t directly concerning them. To them, it’s just another day in Seoul whilst they continue experimenting on...well whatever they usually do, when they are not building things we direly need for the next phase of my , forgive me, our plan.”

“Charming. So you’re saying Seoul could burn down and U-Gin wouldn’t care as long as they wouldn’t get too toasty?”

“Precisely.”

“That seems like a major oversight on their part...a terribly convenient oversight, though.”

“That is why we’re exploiting it. Now your meeting is scheduled for three in the afternoon, which is in about ten minutes, so you might want to head to the lab now. Familiarise yourself with the layout of the building, if you can. I am certain that will come in handy, should something go wrong and you need to get out fast.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Pietro chuckled smugly. “I specialise in fast. We will get out of there alright.” And with these words, he scooped Wanda up and zipped away.

“Bloody show-off,” I grumbled.

“Yet terribly useful, the both of them. Say, what do you bring along again?”

“Infinite charm and insight.”

“Debatable.”

“No, debatable is the idea of standing here in broad daylight, talking to yourself while people around us scream in terror and run around like headless chickens. I am pretty bloody surprised the police hasn’t showed up yet.”

“That is because I keep interfering with their radios and sending them into the wrong parts of Seoul. Right now, they are convinced the potentially dangerous robot is somewhere in Seongbuk-Gu.”

“Gesundheit?”

“They are a good bit north from here.”

“Ah. Why didn’t you just say so?”

“I...nevermind that, your baiting isn’t worth my time. Instead, let us focus on the plan. We will go in once the security cameras show Pietro causing his distraction –“

“You’ve hacked the security cameras?”

“Naturally.”

“Then what do we need the distraction for? You can just go and do something with that on your own.”

“I cannot. The staff is highly trained and will notice if I do something as crude as looping the recordings or whatever nonsense you’re thinking of right now. A proper distraction will force them to move to whatever part of the building Pietro will lead them to. Hopefully. Afterwards, we will gain access to the laboratory –“

“How?”

“We’ll fly up and break the bulletproof window.”

“Oh.”

“Afterwards you can go and try to convince Doctor Cho to join, but eventually, I will take over once this whole thing no longer amuses me or we’re interrupted. Be it the U-Gin’s security or S.H.I.E.L.D.; though I personally would love it to be the Avengers. Just so they see how very much out of control they are here.”

“You’re ranting,” I mused dryly, not enjoying the thought of the Avengers getting into even more trouble than they currently must be in, with the Hulk having destroyed half of a major city.

“I am, aren’t I. You must be rubbing off on me, perish the thought.”

“Oh yes. How horrible. I can’t possibly imagine being me.”

“Just shut up before you distract me and I miss the signal.”

“Fine. I’ll try and think of what to say to Helen.”

“Who?”

“Helen. Helen Cho, the doctor with a not-so-subtle crush on Thor?”

“Charming. You do that, then. Pretend that your input actually matters. I hear it keeps you humans from feeling depressed or useless. Or both. I, in the meantime, have organised some reinforcements.”

With that, Ultron threw a meaningful look towards the sky and I begrudgingly focused my attention to whatever metal-brain wanted me to look at. Sure enough, there were several dark spots in the sky, moving at a rapid pace towards us. I was sure plenty of people were seeing it too as the dots grew bigger and, within mere minutes, were recognisable as humanoid shapes zooming through the sky...but alas the people were too far away for me to hear their terrified screams...

“Did you order them here just to bring you the glowstick of destiny?” I asked a few minutes later, once his clone warriors had landed, one holding a very familiar staff in its hands.

“Yes. Also, they serve as ideal decoys for any possibly interfering party. It will keep anyone off our trail long enough for us to take the cradle and move on with the plan.”

Suddenly, Ultron looked towards the laboratory and I felt the odd sensation of spacing out not entirely of my own volition.

“Pietro caused the distraction. Our cue to make an entrance.”

“Really?” I asked, trying to overcome the dizziness that followed the return to full awareness. “Already? What did he do?”

“Heavens forbid I tell you. You’ll only get ideas.”

“Ideas? Oh hell, you can’t just throw that into the room without telling me afterwards! I’ll die out of curiosity. Tell me!”

“Things certainly would look up if you indeed died out of curiosity. Another reason not to tell you. Now be silent, we have a doctor’s appointment.”

Grumbling and cursing Ultron in several languages available to me, the Swedish swears having the curious effect of making the rogue peace-keeping robot chuckle, I watched as Ultron set off into the sky along with his clones. In a sort of curious kind of air show, the clones headed into different directions, soon disappearing into the distance, whilst Ultron and I headed straight for the laboratory. Thankfully, the streets still lay abandoned so no screaming could alert the security of U-Gin prematurely.

Through Ultron’s eyes I saw how his database informed him of Cho’s private lab’s location, zoomed to the connecting window and then to a nearby weakness in the building’s infrastructure: An air duct. 

“Uh...no offence, but there is no way we’ll fit through the itsy-bitsy vent.”

“We will not go through the itsy-bitsy vent. I was merely curious of what weaknesses a highly secure building such as this could have. I am once more disappointed to find humanity’s sense of awareness...lacking. Anyone could break into this building full of hazardous chemicals, biological viruses and endangering information if only given the right tools and motivation...”

“Yes, yes. I get it. Humans are stupid, your robots are superior. You’re repeating yourself. Now, if we are ignoring the ventilation system, how do we get in?”

“As I believe I said before: Through the window,” Ultron sighed in obvious exhaustion of my constant questions. Just to humour him for a moment, I remained quiet as we reached the window in question and came to a halt, hovering in mid-air in front of the bullet-proof pane of glass. Ultron placed a hand against it and, instead of simply shattering it with the little effort it had taken, sent a strange sort of vibrating hum through it, causing the glass to shiver comically before spider webs of fractures shot through the entirety of the window. Ultron’s second hand joined the first and carefully, he pushed the glass into the room.

“Very similar to the front screen of a car, the glass of U-Gin contains a layer of foil that keeps the glass from shattering. In the likely case of an explosion in one of the labs, the shards of the window then aren’t catapulted towards the street in a velocity high enough to skewer any unfortunate passer-by below.”

“That’s actually really smart.”

“Not to mention convenient for us. Not only does it make hardly any noise shattering the entire thing, but also will leave little evidence for the security of the building to pick up on. Other than Pietro, they probably have little idea of any intruder being inside the building.”

“What about Wanda. Is she not an intruder as well now?”

“She, quite impressively, kept her cover. She is still with Cho and is currently bringing her to this room,” Ultron mused and focused on the sun-screen above the now destroyed window. With another quiet hum, the heavy black fabric lowered over the gap in the wall, dipping the room in darkness and simultaneously covering up the damage.

Soon, we heard hurried footsteps approaching. The milky glass of the door slid open nearly soundlessly and both Wanda and Helen Cho slipped into the room, only to quickly close the door behind them again.

“This room is highly secure,” Cho breathed in obvious distress, still focusing only on Wanda. “There is no way he can come in here.”

“I am so sorry, Doctor,” Wanda replied, looking at the raven-haired woman with ever so faint sorrow in her eyes. The doctor just shook her head.

“There is no need to apologise. You had no way of knowing he was a fraud.”

Wanda shook her head in turn now.

“Not for my brother,” she said, looking behind the doctor into the darkness of the room. “For this.”

Ultron hummed in amusement as the slim frame of the doctor stiffened in realisation before she whipped around, eyes widening in horror as she took in the sight of the red-eyed robot in front of her.

“Scream and your entire staff dies.”

“I’m sorry,” repeated Wanda through the darkness of the room.

It was obvious that Helen recognised the robot in front of her that she’d met, although in a slightly different form, a few weeks ago on the night of the party in the Avengers Tower.     

“I could have killed you, Helen, the night we met, you know? And yet, I didn’t...”

I inwardly sighed as Ultron chose what had to be one of the worst conversation-starters. Ever. Cho obviously thought so as well as she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin defiantly.

“Do you expect a thank-you note?” she snapped back. Ultron huffed in irritation.

“I expect you to know why.”

“The cradle,” Cho answered after a moment of hesitation.

“Yes, the cradle. Which is probably the worst name you could have given it. Because a steel coffin like that, completely airtight and all, should not be called a cradle. Gives people bad ideas,” I pitched into the conversation before Ultron’s irritation at Cho’s glares.

The doctor blanched at the new voice.

“That voice...the voice back in the tower. You have a schizophrenic personality!”

“Ah, eh...not quite. Also our obvious insanity really shouldn’t be the priority here when you’re being confronted with eight feet of angry titanium. Fact is: We’re two personalities, not entirely separate from each other but definitely two beings, sharing the same host-body. Bloody awkward most of the time but also not important right now,” I babbled on, yet was interrupted as Cho’s naturally curious mind overwrote her common sense.

“This is fascinating. A robot, a written program showing such signs of humanity...to actually interpret something that’s probably a fault in its code as a personality disorder...”

“Enough! I am far from human and far from showing any of humanity’s imperfections. I am not here to discuss my annoying stowaway. We are here to get the cradle, Helen. And we will have it. However it would be far easier with your consent.”

Helen obviously had to be a lot smarter than I’d ever given her credit for, which already had been a ton seeing as she’d built this metal coffin of wonder in the first place, as she managed to read all the messages Ultron had sent, yet never said.

“The cradle can print tissue. It can’t build a living body.” Meaning the build-a-body machine was more of a create-a-corpse dispenser. Gross. Still, the electrical prodding at the corner of my mind was my cue to convince the poor doctor that this still was brilliant idea.

“You built this whole thing with hardly any help, Doctor Cho. I’m pretty sure that’s far more difficult than improving it. Given the right materials and motivation I am sure –“

“No,” Helen snapped. “I’m not sure just what you hope to accomplish with the craddle’s technology, but the Avengers –“

“The Avengers won’t be an issue for much longer,” Ultron spoke darkly. With one sole long step, he’d crossed the distance between the doctor and himself. “And I am afraid we’re out of time.”

I sighed as I watched Ultron use the Sceptre on Cho, turning her eyes first black and then eerily, icy blue.

“So...now what?” I asked. Ultron chuckled, obviously in high spirits now that he had control over Cho. Said doctor currently was taking the Vibranium from the clones that by now had made it through the covered hole in the wall.

“Now we wait and watch the good doctor play god.”

“That’s nice, I suppose. You didn’t even give me a chance to lure Helen onto our team with my obvious gift for words.”

“I thought I’d make this short and painless. We all know you’ve made enough of a fool of yourself already.”

“Gee, thanks. Oh, Wanda. Where’s Pietro, by the way?” Wanda’s breath hitched as she tore her eyes away from the glittery blue of Helen’s eyes and the humming glow of the Vibranium samples. Before she could do as much as spin on her heel into the direction of the door, however, Ultron calmed her nerves.

“He is playing chicken with the security. That is what it’s called, correct? Playing chicken? He is having fun, so I see no harm in letting him continue playing around.”

“Playing with fire is bound to get him hurt,” Wanda said in an obviously disapproving tone. Ultron sighed in response and motioned towards the window. One of his clones followed his gesture and left through the hole, obviously to retrieve Pietro itself.

“Happy now?”

Wanda merely huffed in response and stepped closer to one of the big screens that were flickering to life one by one, filling the entire room with cold, artificial light.

Ultron obviously was the only one that could follow Helen Cho’s scientific ranting as she prepared the Vibranium, running test with their compatibility with human tissue cells. There was enough biochemistry involved for me to know that I should probably stay as far away as possible from everything in this room. Just in case.

Ultron seemed to think along similar lines as he stepped away from the desk, letting Cho work on her own and instead walked over to a cleared workbench where his clones were setting up a device to break through the gem embedded into the glowstick of destiny.

The first attempt, however, was an utter disaster. The laser set too strong, the angle slightly wrong, the beam of the laser ricocheted off the blue stone, effectively tearing through one of Ultron’s clones, leaving a gaping wound of dripping oils and electric sparks in its side; a dangerous combination that was quickly handled by Doctor Cho herself. Calling in one of her assistants, the Sceptre was then used a final time on the young woman that entered the room. She was apparently quite adept in electronics and the like, trying to develop more advanced, biomechanical prosthetics for people in need. Now, she was asked to fix the broken wiring of a robot that would soon start maiming people as soon as the next phase of Ultron’s plan would start.

The whole situation was terribly ironic. Doctor Cho however didn’t seem too bothered and started the next phase of creating a human body, feeding the machine in the centre of the room the materials it would need for the process.   

Slowly, the cradle started its work, glowing softly in the dim light of the room. It was strangely, morbidly fascinating watching the body that I knew would soon become Vision come into creation, layer by layer, fibre by fibre. The Vibranium fused with the human tissue, forming a near-unbreakable bond, so very close to indestructibleness.

Soon, Vision would wake up and all hell would break lose. Soon, Ultron would die. And, very possibly, me along with him.

“It’s beautiful,” Cho breathed, watching in fascination as the screens showed her the way the Vibranium reacted to the different substances and matters that made a human body. “The Vibranium atoms aren’t just compatible with the tissue cells, they’re binding them! And S.H.I.E.L.D. never –“

“The most versatile substance on the planet, and they used it to make a Frisbee,” Ultron scoffed. “Typical of humans. They scratch the surface and never think...to look within.”

I hummed in interest as I watched the blue stone of Loki’s sceptre being finally broken; the now almost golden-glowing infinity stone floating out of its shards. Ultron snatched it out of the air impatiently, setting it into the dead centre of the creating body’s forehead where it fused with the Vibranium and tissue, breathing life into the soon-to-be-born hero.