∆ {3¹⁹} {ARTIFICIAL INQUISITIVITY} ∆
IT WAS STRANGELY picturesque. The red humanoid floated in front of one of the massive windows, staring into its own reflected eyes, partially silhouetted by the web of golden lights that carefully blanketed the city of New York, the dark sky highlighting the contrast even further. Around her, the other Avengers, Wanda, and Pietro were making their way down to the level that Roxi stood on as she kept her icy gaze on the robot's red back. She wasn't just going to trust this thing; she had a lot of reasons why she shouldn't, and Roxi knew she needed to keep a close eye on it. It turned around a moment later, as Thor set down his hammer and Pietro and Bruce arrived to the rest of them, every single set of eyes in the room on it as it floated over to them.
"I'm sorry, that was.. odd." It had a typically English accent, not sounding too dissimilar from JARVIS as it supplied an excuse for its actions, its robotic eyes turning to Thor. It seemed intrigued by Thor's regal look, because it generated a cloak a moment later, only causing Roxi's mistrust for it to deepen. How had it simply created something from thin air? From the little she remembered, though that wasn't much, it was against the rules of science to make something, to produce it from nothing. She didn't know enough about it to know if it was a threat, and that unnerved her.
"Thor, You helped create this?" Steve asked incredulously, his stoic expression only giving away a small amount of shock, though his tone portrayed exactly what he was feeling.
"I've had a vision. A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life, and at its centre, is that," Thor returned firmly, ending his sentence by pointing at the amber stone imbedded in the robot's head. Roxi sucked in a low, long breath as she moved her eyes up to its forehead, knowing that all this would end in a fight. She knew which one she'd be on, but if this robot chose differently, their battle would be a lot harder to win.
"What, the gem?" Bruce questioned, taking a few steps forwards, looking confused but intruiged by Thor's confession, as Roxi mulled over their vague chances in war in her mind.
"It's the mind stone. It's one of the six Infinity Stones, the greatest power in the universe, unparalleled in its destructive capabilities."
"Then why would you bring it here?" Steve asked, clearly keen to be more filled in on what was happening. Roxi would've rather been more in the loop too, but seeing as no-one around her had noticed her until she stopped a robot from going through Tony's windows, she wasn't sure she'd get the explanation she needed.
"Because Stark is right." Thor's statement interrupted the question before it, the god's voice set, his expression determined as the whole room listened in silence to the conversation.
"Oh, it's definitely the end times." Bruce had probably been trying to lighten the mood, but by the way no-one reacted, Roxi knew that the situation was far to serious for jokes. Her realisation from when they'd been at Clint's farm was beginning to weigh heavily on her again. If they failed, the consequences would be quite literally disastrous, most probably bringing about the end of the human race, and killing almost every living thing on the planet. Then there would only be metal, the robots that Ultron had created, remaking it the way he wished, with no regard to the world he'd left behind, the people he'd killed, the planet he'd destroyed.
"The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron." Thor's words only backed up the battle in Roxi's mind, half of which was staying as calm and collected as she seemed on the outside, but the other half was a raging storm emotions slamming against her skull, as if desperate to simply gush and flow out of her, to let the people around her see her walls be washed away on that turbulent tide.
"Not alone," the humanoid corrected, taking a step forward as its strange eyes scanned over the ragtag group of people before it, resting its gaze on Roxi for slightly longer than the rest of them. It wasn't maliceful in anyway, and Roxi saw no malintent in its eyes, instead, it seemed to be giving her a curious look. Though, 'he' was a robot, and could probably put on whatever look he wanted to help himself in his situation.
"Who does your 'Vision' sound like JARVIS?" Steve cut in once again, and for once, he seemed just as suspicious as Roxi was feeling. Normally, he was the trusting one and she wasn't. It appeared that no-one in the room was too keen to trust Tony and Bruce and whatever they'd created. Sure, 'the Vision' was presenting itself as calm, and not mentally unhinged as Ultron had appeared at Tony's party, but it was all to easy to put up a front, to make people believe that you were different to who you were, you could pretend to have no emotions, to be stone-cold, but you never would be, and there would always be someone that would see through it. Roxi was so used to having that wall up around her mind, that she couldn't tell if she wasn't picking up on someone faking emotions, or if it was the real thing. Her mind was still fighting her own storm of emotions, that seemed desperate to crash over her body, to fill her with dread and panic, but she kept up her façade, her walls. She couldn't show these people who she really was. Not yet.
"We reconfigured JARVIS' matrix; to create something new," Tony's response was exactly as Roxi had expected to be, the man caught up in the possibilities of what this 'Vision' could be capable of. Of course, he was imagining great things, like saving the world and making huge advances in technology, but if it wasn't carefully monitored, the Vision could have the kind of catastrophic effect alone that Ultron sought, wreaking havoc on the world, most of which would be unaware that a single thing was wrong.
"I think I've had my fill of new." However much Roxi would rather avoid talking to Steve at that moment, who was not only one of the people who cared about the team most, but also one of the few that had seen her walls begin to crumble with the fall of SHIELD, she was glad that he was agreeing with her. It never hurt to have Captain America on your side. Well, almost never. At some point, it probably would.
"You think I'm a child of Ultron," the Vision summed up, his eyes flitting from Roxi to Steve and back again, taking by her guarded posture that she felt the same. Vision was curious about the stone-faced woman who stood only a few steps away from him. He took in her strong position, her blank expression, and the way her ice-blue eyes seemed to bore right through the metal of his head. It stemmed from Ultron's own interest in the woman, due to the lack of information on her file. Neither he or Ultron knew anything about her, save for a few facts caught on the cameras around the tower. He knew that she was close to Natasha Romanoff, who had been taken by Ultron. He knew that she either didn't sleep or woke up every half an hour, sweating from nightmares. He knew more about her than any of the people in the room did, but he didn't know enough to fulfil his inquisitivity.
"You're not?" Steve interrupted Vision's thoughts, and Roxi was slightly glad that the robot had moved his piercing gaze from her that made it look like he was scanning her, as if he knew everything about her, in spite of her history with people who would look at people like that. It was the same way Ultron had looked at her, and that certainly wasn't helping Vision's cause.
"I'm not Ultron. I'm not JARVIS, I'm.. I am," Vision decided as he stopped his small movements, his eyes once again flitting to everyone in the room slowly, as if evaluating their reactions. Roxi was tempted to speak up, to say it wasn't good enough, but the quiet in the room around her was so careful that she didn't want to break it. Tony, among others might have shot her down anyway, saying she was simply paranoid and that she needed to trust that he was doing the right thing, and that Vision would help them. Thankfully, at least a few members of the room seemed to agree with Roxi's suspicions, because Wanda stepped forwards a moment later, challenging Vision with her words.
"I looked in your head, and I saw annihilation. "
"Look again," Vision tried, with more confidence than would be natural when faced with a mind-reading girl who could throw him across the room. Then again, nothing about the robot standing before them was natural. He was completely synthetic, made of layers of different artificial things, all leading to one, robotic product that could probably kill them all at a moment's notice.
"Her seal of approval means jack to me," Clint supplied with a scoff and a short laugh, striding forwards towards Wanda and Vision, firm on his decision as his eyes flickered to Roxi, and then back to the pair, no doubt remembering the effect Wanda's powers had had on her.
"Their powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself; they all came form the Mind Stone," Thor interrupted, walking forwards until he too was standing close to the pair, almost as if the room was beginning to close in on them. Roxi stayed back, preferring to observe rather than get involved in this conversation while she was still attempting to keep her own mind under control, to keep those wild waters from sloshing up past the trapdoor, into the chamber of her mind reserved for combat and keeping herself controlled in pressured situations.
"And they're nothing compared to what it can unleash," the god continued, speaking openly as his loud voice echoed back over Roxi, as if feeling the need to tell her twice, to taunt her with the horrors that might be in their near futures, "with it on our side-"
"Is it?" Steve interrupted once again, still not trusting Vision, and in Roxi's mind, for good reason.
"Are you?" Still, she stayed silence, feeling the trickle of blood in her palms no longer, instead, the dried blood that coated her fingers and seemed to crack with very tiny twitch and movement. Roxi was barely aware of the way her hands were shaking, so completely focused on the world around her as a way of keeping her emotions buried, that she didn't recognise that she was scared. She was hardly ever scared. Even in London with Clint, all that time ago, she hadn't been scared. But now, the feeling bubbled up inside her angrily, only adding to the turbulent emotions she kept forcing down. She had to keep them down; she couldn't let her emotions get in the way of things. But really, they already had. Here she was, not co-operating with her team properly because anxiety was in that stew of emotions, because Roxi was worried for Natasha. Was the woman okay? She didn't have any clue. What she did know was that they were about to have the fight of their life, whether or not Natasha was there with them. For now, she needed to focus on that, beating Ultron, and saving the world, just as she'd done last year in D.C, two years ago in New York, and as she would now.
"On our side?" Steve's three questions were broken, turning to Vision and saying the words firmly for effect, and probably trying to intimidate the robot.
"I don't think it's that simple," came Vision's reply. In Roxi's opinion, it was that simple. Vision would either fight with them, or against them. There wasn't really anything more to it.
"Well it better get real simple real soon," Steve countered, clearly in the same mindset at that moment as Roxi was, and whether that was due to the presence of Wanda and Pietro or Vision, standing in front of them, Roxi wasn't sure.
"I am on the side of life. Ultron isn't. He will end it all," Vision replied carefully, weighing his words in the small gaps in between the sentences and considering what he should say.
"What's he waiting for?" Tony had decided to re-enter the conversation from his position close to Vision, his voice relatively quiet compared to Thor's booms.
"Where?" Bruce's voice was even quieter, though it was made up for with the urgency that he spoke with.
"Sokovia. He's got Nat there too." Roxi felt several sets of eyes on her at the comment and willed herself to stay still, to change nothing and not make a sarcastic remark. Clint especially, knew it was one of her deflection methods. He didn't normally comment on it, but with the situation, he might've felt the need to, and she didn't want to talk. She wanted to fight. One of the pairs of eyes on her happened to belong to Wanda Maximoff, who was looking at her as if she was a wild animal, ready to snap at any moment. It made Roxi start to wonder about how much the girl had actually seen inside her head. The connection to Natasha had been strong in the horrors that Wanda had created, but the question that was still nagging at the back of Roxi's mind, was how much did Wanda really know about her. She was sure it was more than she would've liked.
"If we're wrong about you.. If you're the monster that Ultron made you to be.." Bruce was the next to speak, slowly taking steps towards Vision as he voiced what everyone seemed to be thinking.
"What will you do?" Vision replied carefully, regarding Bruce with weary eyes as Roxi shifted her weight and refocused, more interested in the direction that the conversation was going than she had been. It seemed that no-one knew how to reply, though Roxi was strongly tempted to, and had opened her mouth to supply an answer when Vision filled the silence he'd created.
"I don't want to kill Ultron. He's unique, and he is in pain. But that pain will roll over the Earth, so he must be destroyed." Visions reasoning wasn't flawed, but each of the people in the room were silently deciding if it was good enough for then, if they could trust Vision. Roxi settled in the middle, still not entirely convinced that he wouldn't fight against the Avengers if he believed something that they were doing was wrong. Of course, she could crush him or tear him apart easily, but the Mind Stone would then have no vessel, as the force of the action might well cause the stone to release a surge of energy as a defence mechanism, something they couldn't afford in light of the consequences.
"Every form he's built, every trace of his presence on the net. We have to act now, and not one of us can do it without the others. Maybe I am a monster. But I don't think that I would know if I were one." Vision continued his small speech as he turned back around to look at them, surveying the group of sullen faces and warriors ready to fight for their cause. His last sentence resounded with Roxi particularly deeply. She'd done a lot of things that could make other people view her as a monster. As Vision had said, it was likely that she was one and just hadn't recognised it until now. In fact, it was more than likely, but once again, Roxi knew she couldn't afford to dwell on that now. Not while Ultron was still at large, not while Natasha wasn't safe.
"I'm not what you are. I'm not what you intended. So there may be no way to make you trust me, but we need to go." Vision's final statement was met by silence as Roxi moved her eyes off of him and to Thor's hammer, which Vision held up. Everyone except Wanda and Pietro stared at it, then changed their gaze to Vision, a thick silence covering the room in an almost suffocating wave as Roxi's mistrust was overruled. Even Steve, who was supposedly the most righteous person in the world, hadn't been able to pick the hammer up. Roxi still had no idea how she'd been able to, and felt that if she tried again now, it wouldn't move. Maybe it was something about the events of the last week, or whatever Wanda had put in her head, but Roxi was starting to doubt herself, and in her line of work, that could get you killed.
Thor took the hammer from Vision's hand looking around at everyone in confusion, as if unsure that the scene before him had actually happened, before a grin spread over his face and he clapped Tony on the shoulder, apparently happy with the course of events.
"Right. Well done."
"Three minutes. Get what you need."
{A/N:} I'm sorry this is so late lmao. Writer's block and the 100 were the main issues (i cried for the first time in a year watching it it's so sad) but I finally got it out, two days late. Earlier I managed to change the font of the title and the part menu (somehow) on my computer, and it might just be my computer, but let me know if it's different to you.
I went back and read the first few chapters of this book a few days ago and wow I cannot believe how much better my writing has got. Thanks for sticking around through that and hopefully I will edit this book at some point. It also says that 'Inquisitivity' isn't a word but oh well it sounds fancy.
Please vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.
Thank you for reading, see you Saturday
3080 Words
Written: 25 / 01 / 2021
Published: 25 / 01 / 2021