Deviation Actions
Literature Text
AN: Sorry it's been so long! I finally finished high school, so now I'm scott-free!! A few of these upcoming chapters are going to be a lot of transcript from the movie, so I'm sorry if it's a bit boring. I'm writing the story from Marilyn's perspective, so of course some bits are going to be practically identical. Hold out! There's more good stuff coming. Thank you for your patience, and enjoy!
The Avengers and their friends stood in the lab, surveying the wreckage and remains of Ultron’s attack.
“All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out. He used the Internet as an escape hatch.”
Bruce’s words drifted around Marilyn as she stood at the edge of the room. Her dress was a dirty, tattered mess, and her hair was wild. Her bare feet stung inexplicably, but she ignored it, firmly focused on the building tension in the room. Steve was seething. Tony was in shock. The others were calculatingly quiet.
“Ultron…” Steve muttered.
“He’s been in everything. Files, surveillance.” Natasha turned from the computer and leaned against the desk, crossing her arms over her gray hoodie. “Probably knows more about us than we know about each other.”
Rhodey walked forward, holding his arm. “He’s in your files, he’s in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?”
Maria Hill looked up from where she was plucking slivers of glass from the bottoms of her feet. Huh… I should have stepped on a few of those… “Nuclear codes.”
“Nuclear codes,” Rhodey agreed. “Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can.”
“Nukes?” Natasha asked. “He said he wanted us dead.”
“He didn’t say dead,” Steve interrupted. “He said extinct.”
Clint spoke up. “He also said he killed somebody.”
“There wasn’t anyone else in the building,” Maria answered.
Finally, Tony spoke, stepping into the center of the room and raising his handheld control. “Yes there was.” He flicked it, and a holographic image appeared. A mangled, jumbled mess of data and code. Jarvis….
Bruce moved closer, lifting his hands in helpless confusion. “What… this is insane.”
Steve spoke without looking up, his arms crossed firmly over his chest. “Jarvis was the first line of defense. He would have shut Ultron down, it makes sense.”
“No,” Bruce said firmly. “Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis. This isn’t strategy, this is… rage.”
Loud, thumping footsteps announced Thor’s arrival as he strode through the hologram and caught Tony by the throat, lifting him off his feet.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
“It’s going around…” Great, Barton, sarcasm. Lovely choice. Marilyn took a few tentative steps back.
“Come on, use your words buddy,” Stark strained.
“I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark.”
Steve interjected, stepping forward commandingly. “Thor! The Legionaire.”
The Asgardian dropped Tony on his feet, allowing him to stumble away. “Trail went cold about 100 miles out, but it’s headed north. And it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it, again.”
“Genie’s out of that bottle. Clear and present is Ultron.” Natasha said.
“I don’t understand.” Helen Cho spoke up from beside the remains of a Legionaire. “You wrote this program.” She turned. “Why is it trying to kill us?”
Then, Tony laughed. Laughed. At the sound of her question he had turned his back on the room, bowing his head. Then, unrestrained chuckles began to curl around his now quaking shoulders. The entire room turned ice cold as tensions rose even higher, and every occupant turned to stare – or glare, in some cases – at the billionaire. Bruce began shaking his head, trying to shut him up.
“You think this is funny?” Thor’s voice was low, threatening.
Tony turned. “No… It’s probably not, right?” He surveyed the room, as if looking for approval. Every statement sounded like a question. “This is very terrible. Is it so… Is it so – it is. It’s so terrible.” Laughter accented his insincerity.”
“This could have been avoided if you hadn’t played with something you don’t understand.” Thor sounded like he was speaking to a child, soft and exasperated.
No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, It is funny.” Tony moved to stand toe-to-toe with the warrior. If this went on too long, it was going to get ugly. “It’s a hoot that you don’t get why we need this.”
“Tony, maybe this might not be the time…” Bruce said carefully.
“Really?” Tony turned to the doctor with disdain in his face.
Marilyn hackles rose. This man… She owed him her life, but here he was, in all his arrogant, bastard glory, trying to explain away the destruction he had caused.
“That’s it? You just roll over, show your belly every time somebody snarls?”
Bruce’s caution turned to cool sarcasm, with eyebrows raised. “Only when I’ve created a murder bot.”
“We didn’t! We weren’t even close. Were we close to an interface?”
Bruce pressed his lips together and shrugged.
“Well you did something right. And you did it right here.” Steve moved in, dropping his arms. “The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD.”
“Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?”
“No, it’s never come up,” Rhodey shook his head.
“Saved New York? Recall that?”
“Never heard that.”
“A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We’re standing 300 feet below it.” Tony paused. “We’re the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the livelong day, but that up there, that’s… That’s the endgame. How were you guys planning on beating that?”
Steve looked almost sad. “Together.”
“We’ll lose.”
“Then we’ll do that together too.” Steve moved away and raised his voice, addressing the room. “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.” He finished, turned and surveyed the room, then turned to Marilyn. “You alright?”
She rubbed her upper arms, relaxing a bit. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
Clint stood and stretched. “You’ve got some moves, missy. How did that whole, ripping-the-central-nervous-system-out-with-your-teeth thing work out for you?”
The rest of the Avengers turned to her, eyebrows raised. Steve gave her a tired little grin.
She shrugged. “Hydra experiment, remember? So, I’ve got some hidden talents.”
Clint grinned a bit. “Talents, my ass. You’re Enhanced, aren’t you?”
Marilyn stuck her chin out. “So what if I am?”
He shrugged. “Cool. Welcome to the team.”
“No,” Steve said firmly. “You’re going back to your safe house.”
Meeting his eyes, she gave him an incredulous look, a fond glimmer in her eye. “You can’t protect me forever, Tevers.” She patted his cheek, then sidestepped his huge frame. “I’m a part of this now.”
Clint held up a hand. “Hold up, hold up. Tevers?”
Marilyn heard Steve slump and groan behind her. She winked. “Only I get that privilege. Sorry, Barton.”
He chuckled. “Clint, please.”
Suddenly, Natasha interrupted. “Marilyn, you’re bleeding.”
“What?”
“Your feet.”
Everyone looked down. Bloody footprints glared up at them from the dirty floor, tracing her path since the attack. She lifted one foot, leaning carefully against Steve and grimacing. “Oh… God.”
The sole of her foot was a mangled, dripping mess, embedded with dozens of shards of jagged glass. The other one was the same. Now that she knew, she suddenly felt burning fiery pain lancing through her leg. “Ahh…. That’s ugly.”
Steve quickly guided her to a chair and sat her down. Maria scooted her chair over with the tweezers she had been using. “Damn… How did you not feel that?”
“Well… When you’ve felt the worst pains in the world, I guess you stop caring about the little ones…”
Marilyn spent the next couple of hours in the lab, being patched up by Dr. Cho before she left for her own facilities in Seoul. Finally, she stood on her own and made her way to where the Avengers had gathered. Steve had just handed a tablet to Thor.
“What’s this?” Tony asked.
“A message,” Steve answered. Thor slammed the tablet into Tony’s chest, accenting Steve’s newest discovery. “Ultron killed Strucker.”
Tony turned it and gazed at the morbid picture of a man’s corpse, with the word peace smeared across the wall behind him in his own blood. “And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us.”
Natasha interjected. “This is a smoke screen. Why send a message when you’ve just given a speech?”
Marilyn looked up at Steve. “Intel.”
Steve nodded thoughtfully. “Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss.”
“Yeah, I bet he –“ Natasha was interrupted by the computer beeping. “Yeah. Everything we had on Strucker has been erased.”
“Not everything,” Steve responded.
The Avengers looked at him questioningly. Smiling, Marilyn raised her eyebrows. “Old-fashioned way?”
“Exactly.”
Soon, the room was covered in dozens of file boxes. Each hero dug painstakingly through the files. Even in the face of the situation, Marilyn had to smile. These people had relied solely on technology for years. Now, in the face of hard copy files and a pen and paper, they looked agitated and lost. But Marilyn and Steve? They were in their element.
“Steve.” Marilyn tossed him a file, then ducked as yet another box lid went flying over her head. Obviously, reading was not Thor’s strong suit.
“Known associates… Baron Strucker had a lot of friends.” Steve passed it along.
Bruce skimmed through the profiles. “Well, these people are all horrible.”
“Wait.” Tony held out a hand to stop him. “I know that guy.” He took the file, examining the photo. “From back in the day. He operates off the African coast. Black market arms.” At Steve’s accusing glare, he continued to explain huffily. “There are conventions, all right? You meet people. I didn’t sell him anything. He was talking about finding something new, a game-changer. It was all very Ahab.”
Thor pointed at something in the picture. “This?”
“Ah, it’s a tattoo, I don’t think he had it.”
Marilyn drew closer, peering at the photo.
Thor pointed. “No, those are tattoos, this is a brand.”
The computer beeped rhythmically as is searched for the strange rune. Then, it came up with a match. Bruce spoke up. “Oh, yeah. It’s a word in an African dialect meaning thief, in a much less friendly way.”
“What dialect?”
“Wakanada, w-wa-Wakanda.”
Steve and Tony looked at each other gravely. Tony spoke first.
“If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods…”
“I thought your father said he got the last of it.”
Bruce stood. “I don’t follow, what comes out of Wakanda?”
Turning, Steve lead their gazes to his shield, sitting on the floor behind them. Tony answered for him. “The strongest metal on earth.”
“Where is this guy now?”
