𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄

𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘦

━━━ CLINT AND MEILANI ARRIVED BACK AT THE AVENGERS TOWER IN JUST UNDER TWO HOURS THANKS TO THE SPEED OF THE AIRCRAFT. Clint had called up Tony and the others to have them meet himself and Meilani back at the tower so they could see the Cradle and they could begin to discuss their next form of action. Plus, the team and the pack needed to wait for Steve and Natasha to maneuver their way back to them — if they were okay that was.

The second Meilani had entered the lab with Clint, she'd been swarmed by her pack as they no doubt knew she'd been injured and hurt thanks to her bond with Isaac. The poor Lahey's clothes still had spots of blood in his shirt that he hadn't had time to change yet and she'd been all but swept up by Adrian who spun her this way and that to check for any lingering damages. The only thing remaining to show she'd even be there with Steve was the tiny shards of glass that still dusted Meilani's hair and the slight ache that still took over her body from the fight. An ache that Victor had instantly taken from her without so much as a word about it.

Still no word had been heard from either Steve or Natasha which only sent the team into worry . . . well , everyone minus Tony who seemed chalant about it all. As if he knew in his soul that Steve and Natasha would be just fine. No word was better than word that they were severely injured and taken by Ultron who still lingered around. All the team and the McCall pack could do at that point was sit around and try to get through the time till they came back.

"I feel like a damn mother monkey picking at the fleas in her baby's head," Adrian grumbled, hands delicately shifting through the small shards in Meilani's hair while the McCall female sat with her knees pulled to her chest on the chair before him.

"You do joke that I'm like your child," Meilani mused, resting her chin on her knees and tried not to move too much so Adrian could work properly. The tiny clinking of the shards hitting the plastic cup Tony had given to Adrian echoed around the semi-quiet room. Everyone around them was silent as they inwardly panicked over Steve and Natasha.

"My child that scares me too often. If I have grey hairs before I'm thirty, I'm blaming your wolf ass," Adrian playfully huffed, nudging Meilani's head whose lip twitched slightly in amusement. "Scare me like that again and I'll kill you and then make your eternal life as a wolf-ghost a living hell."

Meilani snorted, shifting herself a bit on the chair to get more comfortable when Adrian paused in his ministrations in her hair to drop more shards in the cup. She knew he was using humor to deflect how scared he was, the thought of losing her like he did Toby weighing heavily on his mind. "I'm sorry, I'll tell the enemy next time that you said it's not okay for me to get hurt."

"That's all I ask, wolfie," Adrian mumbled, fingers combing gently through her curls again and suppressed the small frown that wanted to come out.

Tony's scent infiltrated the lab again as he the Stark man reentered from wherever he'd disappeared off to after he handed the cup off to Adrian to use. He'd been gone for a while and Meilani wondered if he'd try to track and locate where Natasha and Steve were, if he even could. Bruce had even run up to him to ask about the super soldier and assassin. "I have no word yet, but they must be alive or Ultron would have been rubbing it in our faces already."

Clint screwed up his face when the Cradle made another angry beep at him, letting him know that whatever password he'd tried to use was invalid and wrong. How they were going to get into the thing was beyond Meilani's knowledge, but she figured Tony or Bruce would have a plan thought up eventually. "This bad boy is sealed tight. I can't get through the password lock."

"We're gonna have to access the program, break it down from within," Bruce explained, walking over to the thing with Tony at his side.

Tony nodded his head along to Bruce's words before his eyes flickered over to Clint who stepped away from the Cradle to give the two geniuses space to work with it. "Any chance that Nat would send you a message outside the internet? Old school spy stuff?"

Sawyer perked up from where he was perched on one of the filing cabinets in the room, chin lifting off from where it rested on Hugo's shoulder who leant against the front of the cabinet. "Like James Bond style stuff?"

Clint chuckled and shrugged, crossing his arms. "Sort of, but yeah . . . there should be some nets I can try and cast out. See if I can get into contact with her somehow. I'll find her."

Bruce let out a breath relief as Clint jogged out of the room to scope out Natasha, a new plan to contact Nat settling a bit of hope into him that they'd find her and Steve soon. "I can work on tissue degeneration, Tony, if you could fry whatever operational system Cho implanted."

Tony grimaced slightly, hand scratching at the back of his neck as he avoided eye contact with everybody in the room. "Yeah . . . about that."

Bruce's hand that was about to start fiddling with the touch pad on the Cradle froze, his own eyes flickering over to Tony with furrowed eyebrows. A silent conversation seemed to linger in the air between them, thickening the room with a scent mixed with awkwardness and curiosity. Whatever Tony had been thinking must have finally registered on Bruce's face because it instantly dropped along with his hand. "No."

"You have to trust me!"

Adrian rose an eyebrow at Tony, dropping the final shard of glass into the cup and leant his hands on the back of Meilani's chair. "You know, Stark, usually when people tell you to trust them . . . that's usually when you shouldn't trust whatever plan they have in mind."

"Shut it, Martin," Tony groaned, waving off the red haired boy and circled the Cradle so he stood opposite to Bruce. "Our ally, the guy protecting the military's nuclear codes — " he broke off to wave his hand through the air and a holographic orange circle device hovered in the air. " — I found him."

"Hello, Dr. Banner."

JARVIS.

Tony slowly lowered his hand as Bruce looked to Tony for answers as JARVIS was supposed to be gone and Ultron attacked him. How did Tony even find the time to bring back JARVIS in the first place? Unless . . . that was where Tony had disappeared to before. "Ultron didn't go after JARVIS because he was angry. He attacked him because he was scared of what he can do. So JARVIS went underground. Scattered, dumped his memory, but not his protocols. He didn't even know he was in there until I pieced him together."

Victor, who had been perched against one of the pillars in the room while Apollo lounged lazily at his feet, slowly pushed off the pillar and crossed his arms. It caused Apollo to sit up properly from where he'd been slouched against his boyfriend's legs with a huff. "Wait — you want to put JARVIS in that thing with Bruce's help? Tony, you're smart . . . so you have to know this might not even end well."

Tony scoffed softly and shot Victor an odd look over his shoulder as if Victor had been the one to have gone crazy. "What? Of course not. Bruce is gonna put JARVIS in this thing with my help. We are out of my field here. He knows bio-organics better than anyone."

Bruce balked at Tony's words, gesturing wildly to the robot placed in the cradle. Even Bruce looked like he thought Tony was crazy. "And you just assume that JARVIS's operational matrix can beat Ultron's?"

"JARVIS has been beating him from inside without knowing it," Tony countered, pacing around the room and looking at the McCall pack who lingered around the room. "Folks, this is a moment of opportunity. We can create Ultron's perfect self without the homicidal glitches he thinks are his winning personality. We have to."

"I believe it's worth a go, Doctor Banner."

Adrian rolled his green eyes at JARVIS who couldn't even see the Martin boy do it in the first place. However, that never really stopped Adrian Martin. "Of course you would say that. You want a body."

"Adrian," Meilani hissed, reaching behind herself to whack at his arm to get him to shut up. She turned back to Tony and Bruce with a sheepish smile. "Sorry bout him . . . carry on with your smart, science talk."

"I swear I'm in a loop!" Bruce snapped, throwing his hands out to the sides and staring at Tony incredulously. "Tony, hello, this is exactly where it all went wrong!"

Tony released a sharp breath, throwing his head back in frustration as if Bruce was being the unreasonable one in the situation. "I know. I know. I know what everyone else is gonna say, okay? But they're already saying it. We are mad scientists. We're monsters, buddy. We've gotta own it. Make a stand. It's not a loop. It's the end of the line."

Whatever Tony said must have struck a chord in Bruce because the two scientists burst into action. They even recruited the McCall pack to help them out by having them do minimal things that didn't a "mad scientist" to do it. Which mostly just consisted of them being gophers for the two men or Meilani, Apollo and Sawyer lifting especially heavy items that felt more like a paper weight to them with their enhanced strength. The sound of the two men working and shouting random instructions to the other filled the room while the McCall pack drifted around them.

Meilani wasn't really sure what was happening or how it was even happening, but she wanted to assume the two men were making some sort of progress. They didn't appear to be growing annoyed or frustrated as they continued to work on getting JARVIS into the robot body in the Cradle. Their fingers moved quickly and swiftly, getting closer and closer to the point where they could hack into the Cradle. The end result wasn't certain, but Meialni seriously hoped this didn't go wrong or they'd be in even more shit than they already were.

"This framework is not compatible," Tony eventually said, fingers flying across the keypad on the lab table. The room had grown incredibly dark, save for the lights from the machines and the blue glow from the Cradle itself.

"The genetic coding tower is at ninety-seven percent," Bruce informed his counterpart, tapping a few options on the touch pad on the Cradle. "You have got to upload that schematic in the next three minutes."

"I'm gonna say this once," a familiar voice snapped, earning the full attention of everyone in the room as said voice belonged to Steve. Meilani nearly dropped the tool in her hand that Tony had handed her to put away at the sight of him and she gulped down the near knee-buckling relief that Steve was okay. However . . . she was confused to see the twins behind him. "Shut it down! Neither of you know what you're doing."

Bruce stood up to his full height from where he'd been bent over the wiring at the end of the Cradle to make sure everything had been properly in place for when Tony sent of the schematics. "And you do, Rogers? She's not in your head?"

"I know you're angry," Wanda said, slowly stepping around from behind Steve and held up her hands to show she wasn't going to hurt anyone. Her heart beat was erratic in her chest and Meilani couldn't tell if it was from nerves or fear. 

"Oh, we are so far past that. I could choke the life out of you and never change a shade," Bruce retorted.

Steve's jaw twitched in agitation, stepping closer to his fellow Avenger member. He didn't look the least bit happy with him or Tony and Meilani was pretty sure she noticed the look of disappointment in her direction for helping them. "Banner, after everything that's happened . . . "

"It's not compared to what's coming!" Tony barked, dropping down from his spot behind the computer he'd been at for the past hour.

"You don't know what's in there!" Wanda fired back, the fear now forming in her eyes with them being on the Cradle just feet away from her and Pietro.

Before anyone else could say anything, Pietro zoomed around the room becoming nothing more than a blue flash of light. Even with the wolves' enhanced abilities, they couldn't keep their eyes on Pietro long enough to grab him and he was able to unplug everything from the Cradle and wave the final plug in Bruce's face tauntingly. 

"No, no. Do go on," Pietro said to his sister and Steve, a cocky grin on his face as the light from beneath the glass paneling beneath his feet illuminated his face. "You two were saying?"

A gunshot firing off cut off whatever Steve was about to say, a bullet slowing down as it lifted above Pietro. It was silent for a long moment, before the glass beneath Pietro's feet shattered and he fell through the new hole in the ground while Wanda shouted for her twin. He could be heard crashing below in the lower decks and Clint's remark about him not even seeing that coming.

An alarming sound snapped Tony out of his own pause, whipping around to start tapping at the screens behind him. "I'm rerouting the system."

Steve let out a breath of annoyance, swinging his arm back and chucking his shield in Tony's direction. Having heard the air change around him, Tony summoned his iron hand and had it wrapped around his flesh hand before the shield can strike it. He threw the shield right back and sent a blast of energy at Steve next which flung the super soldier across the room while Bruce grabbed Wanda from behind to keep her from doing anything.

"Shit," Meilani cursed as the two boys started to fight and rushed forward when Wanda pulled up her red magic, swarming it around Bruce's chest. Mid-air, Meilani shifted into her alpha side and she kicked Wanda in the side which dropped the red magic from around Bruce who sucked in air. She dropped to Bruce's side and transferred Bruce's tiny bit of pain from himself and onto her, her arm trailing up with black veins as she hissed from the pain that exploded through her chest before fading.

A strike of lightning flashed through the room next and Thor appeared on top of the Cradle, gripping Mjolnir tightly in his hand. His face was tight with the expression a child would get from their scolding parent when they started to fight with their siblings. Raising the hammer in the air, massive amounts of lightning strikes flared from the top of it before he swung it down and smashed it into the Cradle which sent the whole thing into a power overdrive. A blast of white light burst from the Cradle and threw Thor sailing across the room, crashing through a glass wall.

Out of the cradle came a red and thin robotic like figure with a yellow stone in the middle of its forehead, smoke billowing out like steam. Meilani grabbed Bruce next to her and hauled him back, towards where her pack stood and stood protectively before them all. The red figure slowly stood to his full height and scanned the room around it until its eyes fell on Thor. A spark of tension burst between them and the figure flew across the room in attempts to attack Thor. However, Thor was quicker than it and chucked it across the room towards the window that outlooked the New York City skyline on the outside of the Avenger Tower.

The figure hovered in the air just before the window, having stopped itself before it could crash through the glass. The city lights illuminated its body, a red hand hovering just mere inches from the glass while Steve clambered up onto the balcony that Thor was on just below the figure along with everyone else. It hovered for another few moments before it slowly flew back, a black fighting suit coding over the red figure so only its hands and head were visible.

"I am sorry," the figure said, sounding exactly like JARVIS which only meant that Tony's theory had been correct. He and Bruce were able to get JARVIS into the red robotic thing that had been left behind in the Cradle. The thing that Ultron had been so adamant about using to his advantage. "That was odd. Thank you."

"Thor," Steve said, once again sounding like a parent scolding their child as his blue eyes snapped over to the god. "You helped create this thing?"

"I've had a vision. A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life and at its center is that," Thor explained, pointing to the yellow stone in the middle of JARVIS' forehead.

"What? The gem?" Bruce questioned, tilting his head as he took in the glowing stone.

Thor shook his head and let his hand drop limply back to his side, eyes sweeping along the Avengers and McCall pack. "It's the Mind Stone. It's one of the six Infinity Stones. The greatest power in the universe, unparalleled in its destructive capabilities. Stark is right."

Adrian puffed out his cheeks and ran a hand over his face, collapsing back against the railing behind him that looked over into the floor below that everyone had previously been on. "It really must be over for us if Tony was actually right about this thing."

"The Avengers and Miss McCall's pack cannot defeat Ultron," JARVIS added on, a cape now materializing over his shoulders. "Not alone."

Steve was not the least bit convinced of JARVIS that stood before him, gripping his shield once again as he eyed the AI warily. "Why does your vision sound like JARVIS?"

Meilani cleared her throat sheepishly and gestured to JARVIS who slowly moved forward to get a good look at the team and pack around him. Even Wanda and Pietro who also eyed JARVIS warily. "Um . . . well . . . meet the new JARVIS, I guess. Or his new body, at least. That's what we were trying to do when you showed up. Put JARVIS into whatever it was that was in the Cradle, use him to our advantage. It's new."

Steve glanced over his shoulder to Meilani, a spark appearing in his eyes that Meilani couldn't decipher but it was gone before she'd even have time to do so. "I think I've had my fill of new, doll."

JARVIS' head turned in Steve's direction almost fluidly. Almost like he was moving through water and was weightless everywhere. Like a graceful ballerina. "You think I am a child of Ultron, but I'm not Ultron. I am not JARVIS. I am . . . I am."

"I looked into your head and saw annihilation," Wanda accused, stepping away from her brother and closer to JARVIS. There was a threatening gleam in her eyes like she was two seconds away from using her magic on him if he dared even move in the wrong way.

"Look again," JARVIS encouraged gently.

Clint let out a bark of a laugh, shaking his head at Wanda. "Her seal of approval means jack to me."

"Their powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself . . . they all came from the Mind Stone," Thor stressed, moving in closer to the half circle everyone subconsciously made. "And they are nothing compared to what it can unleash. But with it on our side . . ."

"Is it?" Steve cut across Thor, glancing between the god and JARVIS. "Are you? On our side?"

"Steve, maybe you should — "

"It's not that simple," JARVIS said, stopping whatever Meilani would have said to Steve — her hand lingering in the air just inches above his arm. "I am on the side of life. Ultron isn't. He will end it all. He's waiting for all of you."

Clint pursed his lips and nodded, letting the team know that JARVIS wasn't throwing them through the ringer. He was being truthful. "He's in Sokovia and he's got Nat there, too."

Bruce narrowed his eyes at JARVIS, moving closer to him slow like a predator trying to sneak up on its prey. A lingering doubt settled in his eyes and it would take quite a bit for Bruce ( or any of the Avengers and McCall pack ) to trust JARVIS or . . . whatever JARVIS was now. "If we are wrong about you, if you are the monster that Ultron made you to be . . . "

JARVIS smiled softly, understanding crossing his features when Bruce trailed off and leaving an empty ended threat in the air between them. "I don't want to kill Ultron. He is unique and he is in pain, but that pain will roll over the Earth. So, he must be destroyed. Every form he's built, every trace of his presence on the net. We have to act now. Not one of us can do it without the others. Maybe I am a monster. I don't think I'd know if I were one. I am not what you are and not what you intended. So, there may be no way to make you trust me, but we need to go."

A hush fell over the room as JARVIS lifted up Mjolnir and held it out to Thor, all eyes bouncing between the AI wielding something that only those worthy enough could . . . and the god that had a contemplative look on his face. Trying to analyze why the AI could lift the scared hammer and slowly took it from the AI who then walked out.

"Three minutes," Steve announced to the team and McCall pack, breaking the tense silence that lingered after JARVIS exited. "Get what you need and meet back here."

Meilani chewed the inside of her lip as her eyes met Steve's, hand drifting back to her side and away from Steve's arm. She offered him the best encouraging smile she could that she hoped he bought because . . . even Meilani wouldn't have bought the smile if she had seen it for herself. 

word count: ( 3.8k )

— WE ARE SO CLOSE TO THE BIG FIGHT, YALL! there is just 45 minutes left of AGE OF ULTRON and then we can finally move onto CIVIL WAR which i have been planning for way too long with ellis. it's going to be my fave thing ever to write and that's just facts. i hope ya'll enjoyed!