Chapter 33: Hunting Ultron

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Back in Sokovia, the twins meet with Ultron in an empty church.

Wanda: Talk. And if you are wasting our time...

Ultron: Did you know this church is in the exact center of the city? The elders decreed it so that everyone could be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief. [Ultron is sat in a chair facing away from them, a cloth draped over him] You're wondering why you can't look inside my head.

Wanda: Sometimes it's hard. But sooner or later, every man shows himself.

Ultron stands and faces them, revealing his new body. Wanda briefly looks shocked.

Ultron: Oh, I'm sure they do. But you needed something more than a man. That's why you let Stark take the scepter.

Wanda: I didn't expect... But I saw Stark's fear, I knew it would control him, make him self-destruct.

Ultron: Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create avengers, people create... smaller people? Uh... children! I lost the word there. Children. Designed to supplant them, to help them...end.

Wanda: Is that why you've come? To end the Avengers?

Ultron: I've come to save the world. But also... yeah. We'll move out right away. This is a start, but there's something we need to begin the real work.

Wanda: All of these are...

Ultron: Me. I have what the Avengers never will. Harmony. They're discordant, disconnected. Stark's already got them turning on each other. And when you get inside the rest of their heads...

Pietro: Everyone's plan is not to kill them.

Ultron: And make them martyrs? You need patience. Need to see the big picture.

Pietro: I don't see the big picture, I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it every day.

Ultron: You lost your parents in the bombings. I've seen the records.

Pietro: The records are not the picture.

Wanda: Pietro.

Ultron: No, please.

Pietro: We were ten years old, having dinner, the four of us. When the first shell hits, two floors below, it makes a hole in the floor. It's big. Our parents go in, and the whole building starts coming apart. I grab her, roll under the bed and the second shell hits. But it doesn't go off. It just... sits there in the rubble, three feet from our faces. And on the side of the shell is painted one word...

Wanda: Stark.

Pietro: We were trapped for two days.

Wanda: Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think, "This will set it off." We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us.

Pietro: I know what they are.

Ultron: I wondered why only you two survived Strucker's experiments. Now I don't. We will make it right. You and I can hurt them. But you will tear them apart, from the inside.

Back at the Avengers headquarters, the Avengers are looking for Ultron.

Maria: He's all over the globe. Robotics labs, weapons facilities, jet propulsion labs, reports of a metal man, or men, coming in and emptying the place.

Steve: Fatalities?

Maria: Only when engaged. Mostly guys left in a fugue state going on about old memories, worst fears, and something too fast to see.

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