"Stark..."
The Avengers stood together on the upper balcony portion of the living room, looking down toward the elevators. The voice came from one of the Iron Legion suits. Tony turned at the sound of Steve's voice, locking eyes with Lottie. They nodded, Lottie turning her wrist and flicking a holograph screen down her forearm from her bracelets, quickly opening the Iron Legion protocol.
"Jarvis?" Tony called out, hoping to get the AI to do the work for her.
"I'm sorry, I was asleep. Or...I was a- dream?"
"Reboot, Legionnaire OS, we got a buggy suit," Tony continued to call out for Jarvis, though he never responded. Steve took a protective step in front of Lottie as she moved through the Iron Legion protocol system.
Her eyes widened when she realized that all of the suits were accounted for. None of them read any problems.
"There was a terrible noise...and I was tangled in... in...strings. I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy,"
"You killed someone?" Steve questioned. The team all shared looks, moving into defense positions. One look between Lottie and Tony told the man all he needed to know as the Avengers eyed their opponent carefully.
"Wouldn't have been my first call. But, down in the real world we're faced with ugly choices,"
"Who sent you?" Thor's booming voice echoed throughout the room, his grip tightening on his hammer. Maria Hill still sat on the couches, carefully reaching over to grab her gun.
" 'I see a suit of armor around the world', "
Lottie's breath hitched at the familiar voice of Tony coming from the bot. She turned, locking eyes with Bruce as the same thought ran through their heads, before they looked to Tony.
"Ultron," Bruce finally spoke their thought aloud, gaining wide eyes from Tony himself.
"In the flesh. Or, no, not yet. Not this...chrysalis. But I'm ready. I'm on a mission,"
"Tony," Lottie spoke lowly, her voice a warning toward the man. She knew something would go wrong. Steve took another step in front of Lottie as she flicked off the holographic screen, preparing herself.
"What mission?" Natasha questioned, her and Bruce eyeing up the bot in close proximity to one another.
"Peace in our time,"
The walls of the elevator blasted open, multiple Iron Legion bots flying out toward the team. Lottie's eyes widened as she flicked her wrists, armor covering her hands as she generated her shield.
The team dove out of the way as Steve kicked up the table in front of them, only for the bot to break it and send the pair of soldier flying backwards. They landed not far away from each other, Lottie's shield shouldering most of the fall.
The pair didn't even share a glance, moving their separate ways to help their team.
Shield held up, Lottie ran toward the broken glass wall to the laboratory where she had seen Tony land. One of the bots shot at her as she blocked it with her shield, quickly taking off her heels and launching them at the bot, lodging them in the wires along it's neck as it fell to the ground.
Lottie jumped through the broken glass, landing beside Tony as she pulled him to his feet. They turned at the sound of one of the bots, watching as it grabbed hold of the scepter and flew past them.
"Thor, scepter!" Lottie called out, hauling Tony toward the walkway overlooking the living room, the pair ducking behind her force field shield and hoping that Thor had heard them.
One of the bots was in the air, hovering just by them. Tony ducked out from behind Lottie's shield, grabbing one of the tools he had grabbed in the lab and jumping onto it's back, trying to disable it. Lottie shot down another bot in the meantime, turning to see Clint being backed into a corner by a bot without his bow and arrows.
"Clint!" Lottie called out, grabbing Steve's shield from where it sat near a wall. She flung it across the room toward him, Clint catching it on his arm as he destroyed the bot, turning to see Steve about to battle with another one after helping Helen Cho.
"Cap!"
Clint then threw the shield to Steve, who caught it and destroyed the last bot still in the air. With a deep breath, Lottie swiped her hand through the air as the shield dissipated once again, jumping over the railing to the ground below and grabbing onto Tony, helping him to his feet as she wiped the remaining broken glass from his arm.
"That was dramatic! I'm sorry, I know you mean well. You just didn't think it through. You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change. How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to...evolve?" Ultron picked up one of the heads of the Iron Legion bots, examining it before tossing it across the room. "With these? These puppets? There's only one path to peace: The Avengers' extinction."
Thor's hammer flew through the air, destroying Ultron in a second. The hammer returned to it's owner as the pieces of the bots fell to the ground, but Ultron's voice still rang out from the machine, singing to them. Taunting them.
"I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me, no strings on me,"
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"All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out, used the internet as an escape hatch,"
The team had changed from their dirty and torn clothing, now gathered together in the partially destroyed lab. Charlotte Watson leaned against one of the counters beside Steve, biting her nails as she eyed the destroyed Iron Legion bot propped on a table not too far away. Tony was looking down at it as well.
"Ultron," Steve grumbled, shaking his head with a glare.
"He's been in everything. Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other," Natasha informed the team, stepping away from one of the lab computers.
"He's in your files, he's in the internet," Rhodey mumbled, looking around at the team frantically. "What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"
"Nuclear codes?"
"Nuclear codes," Rhodey reiterated, pointing down at Maria after she spoke. "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."
"Nukes won't be his priority," Lottie cut in, shaking her head. "He's after us. He wants us dead, extinct, as he so kindly put it."
"He also said he killed somebody," Clint reminded the team, looking around. "But there wasn't anyone else in the building, was there?"
"Yes there was,"
Lottie breath caught in her throat as the team stared wide eyed at the holographic image of Jarvis' interface that Tony displayed before them. The comforting hand on Steve landed on her arm as she stepped away from the table behind her, looking at the mangled image of the AI.
"Tony, this is insane," Lottie breathed out, looking over at her best friend. He refused to look back.
"JARVIS was the first line of defense," Steve concluded from his place beside Lottie, nodding his head. "He would've shut Ultron down, it makes sense."
"No, Ultron could've assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy, this is...rage," Bruce concluded, still staring at the image of Jarvis.
The room grew quiet, everyone just staring at the image of the familiar AI before them. The peace didn't last long, though, as Thor came strutting back into the room. His hand found Tony's throat, gripping onto it as he lifted him off his feet.
"Thor!" Lottie called out, trying to move toward him but Steve grabbed her arm, shaking his head.
"Come on. Use your words, buddy," Tony choked out from his lack of air, gaining a glare from Thor.
"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark,"
"Thor!" Steve cut in, gaining his attention. "The Legionnaire?"
Albeit reluctantly, Thor let Tony down on the ground before looking around at the team.
"Trail went cold about a hundred miles out but it's headed north, and it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it, again,"
"I don't understand," Helen Cho questioned the team, mainly Tony, turning to look at him. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"
"Because Tony doesn't listen to anyone when they try to warn him," Lottie cut in, finally meeting eyes with Tony as her lips turning into a frown. "I told you this interface couldn't be trusted. I warned you about the unknown variables. I told you that something didn't seem right, but you didn't listen. Now look where we are, T."
Tony looked away from Lottie's gaze, looking down to the paperwork in front of him. Then, he laughed.
"You think this is funny?" Thor challenged, moving toward him. Tony looked up from the paperwork, his laughter stopping.
"No. It's probably not, right? Is this very terrible? Is it so...is it so...it is. It's so terrible-"
"This could've been avoided if you had listened to Lady Lottie and hadn't played with something you don't understand-"
"No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this," Tony sneered, stepping up to face Thor.
"Tony, maybe this isn't the-"
"So that's it?" Tony turned to look at Bruce, now, cutting him off. "You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls. And you, Lottie, you don't get a say when you didn't even help us."
"I didn't help you because I told you something wasn't right, I told you there were too many unknown variables," Lottie shot back, glaring him down as Steve's hand came to rest on her arm. "Take it from the woman who's brain moves a mile a minute, the one who can sometimes see the future, that if something doesn't feel right then you shouldn't do it. And don't berate Bruce, he's allowed the step back when you've created a murder bot, for crying out loud!"
"See but that's the thing, we didn't," Tony fired back, looking back toward Bruce. "We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"
"Well, you did something right. And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD," Steve reminded him, gaining an eyeroll from Tony as he looked around at the team.
"New York, giant wormhole in the sky? Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but, that up there? That's...that's the endgame. How were you guys planning on beating that?"
"Together," Lottie shot back, meeting with Tony's gaze as the rest of the team watched on. He smiled, shaking his head.
"We'll lose,"
"Then we do that together too," Steve jumped in, staring down Tony as well. The man looked between the two for a moment before shaking his head, looking away. "Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place. Let's start making it smaller."
The team began to huddle together, trying to figure out a way to track Ultron without his knowledge. Lottie stayed put for a moment, her eyes watching Tony as he walked away from the group, running a head down his face. A frozen etched itself onto her lips as she turned her back on her best friend, walking toward the team and taking Steve's outstretched hand in her own.
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This is chapter fifty-nine, and it takes place in Age of Ultron. I want you all to know that I have already prewritten two of the biggest scenes in Endgame and boy, you guys are not ready for it at all.