Rogue (An Avengers Fanfic)

Chapter 14: Ultron

*WARNING: Contains 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' spoilers!

We all looked at each other, waiting for whatever it was that Ultron was about to do.

Steve flipped over a table as the Iron Legion robots smashed through the walls. I immediately dived to the ground to get out of the way of the robots, before getting up and running towards them. I figured that if I used my electricity I'd be able to disable them.

"Rogue, be careful," Nat warned from behind the bar, where she was shielding Banner. If he turned into the Hulk now he'd tear the whole place apart.

I nodded, reaching out and touching two of the bots at once, instantly disabling them. I smiled to myself, turning around to find another to touch, when I was knocked off my feet and through a glass wall. "Ow!" I said to myself, getting up slowly so as not to hurt myself further. "Stark!" I called, looking up to see that he was clinging to the back of one of the robots, suspended in the air.

"One sec, one sec!" he said, driving a screwdriver into the neck of the robot and stopping it, him and the robot falling to the ground. I ran to him.

"Are you OK?" I asked him.

"Yeah, fine," he said breathlessly. I nodded and punched him in the arm as hard as I could.

"Ouch! What was that for?" he asked, rubbing the spot where I had punched.

"Don't pretend this isn't your fault!" I said with an eye roll as I looked around the room, noting that most of the robots had been taken out by our team.

"Cap!" Hawkeye called, throwing Steve's shield towards him. Steve took the shield and threw it towards the last remaining bot, leaving just Ultron himself.

"Well, that was dramatic," Ultron said into the silence. We all looked at him; he had our full attention. "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? With these? These puppets? There's only one path to peace: The Avengers' extinction."

Thor threw his hammer at Ultron, smashing his robotic body to pieces at the end of his speech. Now there was nothing to fill the silence.

"Everyone OK?" Steve asked. There was a chorus of Yeses and nods as everyone collected themselves. We all looked completely shaken. Ultron was something that we never thought we'd have to face.

***

"He's got into everything. Files, surveillance. He probably knows more about us than we know about each other," Nat said looking through what was left of our files. I sat next to her, looking over her shoulder. A lot of the information that we had acquired over the years was missing, particularly information about S.H.I.E.L.D.

"This is insane," Banner said. I scoffed.

"It's more than insane. Why is this happening?" I asked no one in particular.

"He said he wanted us dead," Nat said, staring into space.

"He didn't say dead, he said extinct," Steve corrected her.

"What does that even mean?" I wondered aloud.

All of a sudden, Thor burst into the room, immediately grabbing Stark by his neck and lifting him up.

"Come on, use your words buddy!" Stark said, his voice coming out strained.

"I have more than enough words to describe you Stark," Thor said menacingly. I stood, crossing my arms.

"Thor, put him down," I said.

"You're defending him?" he asked me incredulously.

"Look, as much as we all want to kill Stark right now, myself included, we need to work out what to do," I said, trying to diffuse the situation.

"Ultron has the sceptre, we have to retrieve it, again!" Thor said, putting Stark down.

"I don't understand, you built this program," Dr Helen Cho interrupted, looking at Stark. "Why is it trying to kill us?" she asked, to which Stark began to laugh. We looked at each other in disbelief.

"This isn't a joke," I reminded him angrily.

"It's funny that nobody gets why we need this. We're the Avengers. We can fight and beat enemy after enemy but, at the end of the day, they're gonna keep coming. There's always another threat. Ultron would have eliminated that, he would have ended the team," Stark said.

"But he hasn't ended the team," Nat said.

"Not yet, because he sees us as the enemy. If I could just reprogram him..." Stark trailed off.

"Yeah, because that murder-bot is really going to let you get your hands on him?" Hawkeye asked with an eye roll.

"Look, Ultron's calling us out," Steve said. "And I want to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place, let's start making it smaller," and with this, we all began to go our separate ways. I stayed, unmoving, not taking my eyes off of Stark.

"What?" he asked me, noticing my glare.

"I'm just waiting..." I said.

"For?" Stark questioned. I didn't understand how, after all this, he could still be so snarky.

"A sense of guilt, a sense of remorse. Maybe an apology?" I said with a sigh, before turning away from him.

"You want me to apologise? I did this for you!" he said to my back.

"For me? You created a human-killing robot hell-bent on destroying us for me? Wow, thank you Stark. I mean, most guys get their girlfriends flowers or chocolates or something, but this-"

Stark cut me off. "You can save the sarcasm, I get it."

"No, you don't get it. You never accept responsibility for any of the reckless, ridiculous stuff that you do, but this is the worst. You've put us all in danger, and you don't care! Pepper was completely right, you are the most selfish..." I trailed off, not wanting to cry.

"You don't know what she made me see," he said softly.

"She?" I questioned.

"The Maximoff kid," he answered. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff were two new threats. Twins from Sokovia who had been experimented on. Wanda (Scarlet Witch) had telekinesis and could make someone see whatever she wanted them to see, usually their biggest fears. Pietro (Quicksilver) could move faster than the speed of sound.

"What did she make you see?" I asked him, my tone softer than before.

"You, all of you guys. You were dead," he said. "And I was alive, and it was my fault. I just wanted to do something so that this never happens. I can't lose you, any of you."

I frowned. "You were the last one left."

He nodded. "Do you get it now?"

I walked towards the door. "If you ever do something like this without telling me again, I will actually kill you. And that's not in affectionate boyfriend-girlfriend terms, I will literally electrocute you, rip out your heart with my bare hands and run over your lifeless corpse with a train, got it?" I asked, staring him in the eye to make sure he knew that I wasn't joking.

He nodded, knowing full-well what I was capable of. If you look at the biggest mistake someone's ever made, surely creating Ultron comes a very close second?

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Thank you for reading! 

What happens next? Are the team going to find Ultron? Find out in chapter 15 next week!

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