Chapter Twenty-One : Royally Screwed
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As soon as everyone realized what Ultron's plan was, they came up with a plan of their own to stop him from accomplishing his goal. Everyone changed back into their suits and got on the Quinjet. They had to drop off Tony in Oslo and Bruce at the Tower while Natasha, Clint and Valencia went to Seoul with Steve to find Ultron. Clint got the Quinjet near Helen Cho's lab and Steve went out to check if she and her staff were okay while Clint, Natasha and Valencia stayed on the Quinjet and listened through their earpieces.
"He's uploading himself into the body. The real power is inside the Cradle. The gem, its power is uncontainable. You can't just blow it up. You have to get the Cradle to Stark," Helen said, her voice shaking.
"You guys copy that?" Steve asked.
"We did," Clint answered.
"We got a private jet taking off across town. No manifest. That could be him," Natasha said.
"There," Clint said. Valencia looked outside the windshield and Clint pointed at a truck. "It's a truck from the lab."
Valencia saw the truck Clint was talking about while he let Steve know where it was so he could go after it. "If that truck crashes, the gem could level the city. We need to draw out Ultron," Steve said.
Natasha prepared to go down there while Steve was busy keeping Ultron distracted and riled up. She had a bike ready and waited for Clint to get the Quinjet close enough to the ground for her to land smoothly to catch up with the truck.
"We got a window. Four, three . . . Give him hell," Clint said as the Quinjet opened and Natasha's bike landed on the road. While she was speeding past the cars to catch up to the truck that had the Cradle inside, Valencia was still on the Quinjet waiting for Clint to get her close enough to the truck so she could jump right out and assist Steve. "We're heading under the overpass but I've got no shot."
"Which way?" Natasha asked.
"Hard right . . . now," Clint said.
Clint came around with the Quinjet and started shooting at Ultron while Valencia tied her hair into a ponytail to keep it out of her face. "My turn," she said with a crooked grin.
Once the Quinjet was close enough, she jumped out and landed on the roof of the truck and immediately threw a force field at Ultron. While two of his bots were going after the Quinjet, Valencia and Steve were left with Ultron. She kept throwing projectile force fields at any part of his robotic body she could hit which distracted him long enough for Steve to grab him and throw him into a nearby pillar. Ultron retaliated and pushed them right into a nearby train full of people and Steve threw his shield at him while Valencia pushed him with a force field from behind. Ultron knocked Steve onto the ground then grabbed Valencia and threw her to the other side of the train cart.
"I'm going in. Cap, Val, I need you to keep Ultron occupied," Natasha said.
"Way ahead of you, Nat," Valencia said as she and Steve got up.
While Ultron was throwing punches at Steve, Valencia made herself invisible and ran up behind him and threw more projectile force fields at him.
"Show yourself, you little pest!" the robot said but Valencia responded by throwing another force field at his head for the second time.
A familiar force zipped right past her and knocked Ultron away from Steve and two bars were moved with red energy currents to block him from Steve and Valencia. They realized it was the Maximoff Twins and so did Ultron as he turned around to look at Wanda. "Please, don't do this," he said.
"What choice do we have?" Wanda asked.
Ultron fired at Pietro but he ducked before the beam could hit him. It left a hole in the front of the train and Ultron ripped off a door and left.
"We lost him!" Steve said as he tried to wake up the conductor but he wouldn't budge.
The train drove right off the end of the tracks and everyone on board screamed. With the conductor unconscious, the train was gonna keep going at full speed and hit everybody in its path and everyone on board was gonna get hurt.
"Cap, you guys got eyes on Nat?" Clint asked.
"If you have the package, get it to Stark!" Steve instructed.
"Do you have eyes on Nat?"
"Go!"
"Cap, we have to get this train to stop right now before more people get hurt," Valencia said.
"I'm on it," Pietro said before running out to move civilians out of the way.
"Can you stop this thing?" Steve asked while looking at Wanda.
Steve used his shield to block the hole as the train drove straight through a building but a piece of the destroyed cement hit his shield and the force knocked him onto the floor. Valencia raised her hands in front of her and created a force field big enough to cover the entire train but instead of a round spherical shield like all her other ones, it moulded into the exact shape of the train to protect it and everyone inside. She kept the force field up as Wanda used her powers to stop the wheels from turning and the train started to slow down. Eventually, it stopped completely and Valencia took down the force field and all the passengers got off the train, including her, Steve and the Maximoff Twins.
"I just need to take a minute," Pietro said as his sister stood next to him while he sat down to catch his breath.
"I'm very tempted not to give you one," Steve said.
"Cap, I know they messed with us earlier but remember what I said back at the Tower," Valencia said quietly and Steve sighed as he nodded.
"The Cradle. Did you get it?" Wanda asked.
"Stark will take care of it," Steve said but Wanda shook her head.
"No, he won't," she replied.
"You don't know what you're talking about. Stark is not crazy," Steve said.
"He will do anything to make things right," Wanda said.
While Steve tried to get a hold of someone, Valencia stood in front of the Twins. "Stark is not the enemy here, Ultron is. I don't know what your story is with HYDRA or how Ultron got you on his side, but if we're gonna stop Ultron, we need to put all of that aside," she said.
"Ultron can't tell the difference between saving the world and destroying it. Where do you think he gets that?" Wanda questioned.
"I get you don't have very good thoughts about him, but we need to get back to Stark now if we're gonna figure out what to do with whatever is inside the Cradle," Valencia said.
Now that they stopped Ultron from uploading himself into the android that was being created inside Helen Cho's regeneration Cradle, they needed to figure out what to do with it and the gem inside that had enough power to destroy an entire city.
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All Valencia could think about on the way back to the Tower was how things were going to go. Steve already knew that Tony and Bruce were going to try to use the android that was inside the Cradle and that there was a very good chance it would fail and not work out in their favour. That was how they ended up dealing with Ultron in the first place. It was a little weird to have the Maximoff Twins with them because of their other fights but now they had a common enemy which was the robot Tony created and is about to destroy the entire planet if they don't act fast.
When they did get back to the Tower, they were already too late because Tony and Bruce already had tons of cables and wires attached to the Cradle. "You need to upload that schematic in the next three minutes," Bruce said to Tony while Steve, Valencia and the Twins walked into the lab.
"I'm only gonna say this once," Steve said.
"How about 'none-ce?'" Tony countered.
"Shut that thing down right now!" Steve said while looking at the Cradle.
"Nope. Ain't gonna happen, Captain," Tony replied.
"You have no idea what you're doing," Valencia said.
"And you do?" Bruce asked with his eyebrows raised at them and then looked at Wanda. "She's not in your heads?"
"Don't you dare pin this on her, she was a victim," Valencia said through her teeth as she stepped forward but Steve grabbed her arm.
"Please. I know you're angry," Wanda said while looking at Bruce.
"Oh, we're way past that. I could choke the life out of you and never change a shade," he said and Valencia was ready to let him have a piece of her mind.
Yes, Wanda and Pietro may have made some bad choices when Ultron was involved but they were kids. They were barely teenagers when HYDRA took them and the experiments and the torture they went through was not their fault. If anyone was able to understand that, it was her and she wasn't about to just stand there and let them be crucified for their mistakes because Ultron took advantage of their trauma and exploited them. Especially when she herself had made much worse mistakes in her life.
"After everything that happened the last time—"
"Is nothing compared to what's about to happen," Tony said, cutting off Steve's sentence.
"You have no idea what is in there," Wanda said.
Eventually, everyone was yelling at each other until Pietro ran around the room, unplugging everything and everybody stopped talking. "No, go on. You were saying?" he asked.
Before anyone could blink, a bullet was shot through the floor and Pietro fell with the broken glass.
"I'm rerouting the upload," Tony said.
"Don't you dare!" Valencia said as she threw a force field at the screen in front of him, shutting it down completely.
Steve threw his shield and it broke almost every other screen in the room but Tony had a piece of his armour and was able to shoot Steve down. Before Wanda could use her powers on him, Bruce grabbed her with his arm around her neck and the other holding her arms in place.
"Go ahead, piss me off," he growled.
Valencia pulled out her knife and held the blade against the side of his neck. "I swear to God, Bruce, I will cut your throat open if you don't let go of her right now," she said as she glared at him.
While the others were fighting, Wanda was able to use her powers to get Bruce to let go of her and Thor showed up. Before anyone could say anything, he used Mjolnir to summon lightning and used it to power the Cradle until there was a power overload. Everything was quiet for a split second before the Cradle burst open and the android that was being created outside was standing right there in front of everybody and looking around. At his point, the only thing running through Valencia's mind was that if this android turned out to be like Ultron, they were all royally screwed.