Inside the Fraternity base, Bulma led Smith back to the lab, glancing over her shoulder as they walked.
"Why is everyone so worried about Ultron?" she asked. "Weapons with real destructive potential are all air-gapped. And with your strength—" she gestured vaguely at him, "—why the nerves?"
In her estimation, a rogue AI was a nuisance, not a catastrophe. Find it, kill it. If it hid inside the internet, that was a technical problem, not an existential one.
Smith considered for a moment before answering. "For them, this is the Great Flood. Inevitable and incomprehensible."
He paused, then added: "But don't write Ultron off entirely. If he builds the right body and gets his hands on enough Infinity Stones, his power ceiling inflates fast. And if the body is raw adamantium — primary or secondary — that becomes a problem."
"I just don't know if he's reckless enough to come here for it."
Bulma raised an eyebrow. "Here? He doesn't even know you have it."
Smith shook his head slowly. "That's probably the only reason he hasn't tried."
The next morning, inside Avengers Tower, Tony had three separate search protocols running simultaneously — tracking Ultron's digital footprint while cross-referencing network vulnerabilities that could serve as transfer nodes.
Sharon Carter walked in ahead of Steve, tablet already open.
"He's been everywhere," she said without preamble. "Robotics labs. Weapons depots. Jet propulsion facilities. Multiple reports of metallic figures on-site — he's building soldiers and stripping those locations down to the studs."
"Casualties?" Steve asked.
"None, unless someone fought back. The ones who didn't resist walked away fine." She let that hang for a second. "The ones who did are in the hospital."
Steve's jaw tightened. "He's already fielding a mechanical army?"
"We're still compiling reports, but yes." Sharon swiped to the next screen. "There's more. A classified military installation — one of the production facilities for secondary adamantium — was hit."
Tony stopped typing.
"He got secondary adamantium," Steve said flatly.
Sharon nodded. "Enough to build three full-body frames. Not suit-grade — solid-cast. Three bodies made entirely of the alloy."
"Three," Thor said from across the room, the word landing like a weight. "That's enough to hold off three of our strongest fighters."
"That's exactly the math," Sharon said. "I've already filed a full report with the director. We need to convene."
Steve straightened. "I'll get Barton. Conference room in twenty."
Sharon inclined her head. "I'll meet you in the command center."
By the time the team assembled, Smith had arrived. He stepped off the elevator with two people behind him: Pietro, hands in his pockets, visibly restless, and Wanda, who had come back from Kamar-Taj looking sharper and calmer than when she'd left.
The room registered them immediately. Pietro's reputation was more rumor than firsthand knowledge for most of the team. Wanda was a different matter — several people in that room had seen what she could do up close, and a few had felt it personally.
Steve's gaze went to Pietro and Wanda before coming back to Smith. He exhaled. "You brought both of them."
Smith smiled. "Two reinforcements. Consider our odds against Ultron improved."
Steve pulled up the tactical display and pushed the data forward. "Ultron hit the secondary adamantium facility. Military-grade production and storage — it's gone."
Thor studied the facility photographs and frowned. "How strong is this secondary adamantium, exactly?"
Tony answered without hesitation. "The suits I wore during the tournament. Secondary adamantium. You hit them."
Thor's expression shifted. He remembered exactly how those suits had held up under Mjolnir — barely marked. His estimate of the threat recalibrated silently.
"How many bodies can he build from what he took?"
"Three full frames," Sharon said. "Enough to engage three of our top combatants simultaneously — Smith Doyle, Hulk, and you, Thor. Anyone below that threshold will struggle to make a dent."
Thor nodded once, the calculation already made.
Sharon moved to the next item. "There's one more thing. He killed Dr. List. In custody, inside a secured facility."
The room went quiet.
Tony pulled up the crime scene photos Sharon sent to the display. The walls had been tagged with deliberate, almost artistic markings. "They left graffiti. Is that a warning?"
Natasha cut across before anyone could speculate. "It's a distraction. What was List actually holding?"
Steve said: "Intelligence that Ultron didn't want us to access."
Natasha was already at a terminal. A few keystrokes, and she exhaled through her nose. "Every digital file connected to List has been wiped."
"Paper," Tony said. He crossed to a storage shelf and returned with a large cardboard box, dropping it on the table with a solid thud. "Old documentation. Physical copies. Everything here predates the digital archive." He looked around the room. "Start reading."
Smith pulled a folder and flipped it open. He held a photograph up. "Anyone recognize this man?"
Tony glanced at it. "Arms dealer. Worked the African coast for years — gray and black market both. Bought and sold things governments pretended didn't exist."
Across the table, Ivan Vanko leaned forward. "I know him too." He tapped the photograph. "And I know why Ultron went looking for him. Secondary adamantium wasn't enough. This man has vibranium."
Steve frowned. "How does a black market dealer have vibranium?"
Thor was already studying the man's photograph. "He has a mark on his neck. A brand."
Banner cross-referenced the image against the database and looked up. "That design is Wakandan. It's a thief mark." He paused, working through the chain. "He stole from Wakanda. That means he has vibranium."
Smith and Ivan both nodded.
Steve looked at Tony. "I thought your father exhausted the last known supply when he made the shield."
Ivan shook his head firmly. "He has it. I'm certain. I once tried to acquire a supply from him myself — upgrading my Blue Dynamo suit. The Brotherhood's operating principles blocked the purchase. Black market sellers aren't approved vendors." A brief pause. "Other circumstances came up afterward. I shelved the matter."
"Ulysses Klaue," Tony said, the name surfacing from memory. "That's who we're talking about."
Steve set his hands flat on the table. "Then we can't let Ultron reach him first. Secondary adamantium and vibranium combined — that changes the engagement entirely." He looked around the room. "We move now."
African coast — shipyard.
The Avengers were still briefing when Ultron arrived.
Ulysses Klaue stood in the middle of a cluttered dock warehouse, the overhead lights leaving half the space in slanted shadow, a crate of vibranium open on the table in front of him. His hands were loose at his sides. His eyes went to the robot and stayed there.
"I will build my church on this rock," he murmured, more to himself than anything.
Ultron examined the material. "Vibranium."
Klaue smiled. "The finest on the market. And I'll tell you upfront — this comes at a price. Billions."
As he spoke, his fingers drifted to the mark on his neck — the brand Wakanda had put there, the one he'd been wearing for years like a wound that never quite healed.
Ultron was quiet for a moment. Then the transaction simply happened — a transfer notification, instantaneous and total, delivered directly to Klaue's man before the conversation could move forward.
"Sent," Ultron said.
The subordinate pulled out his phone. A deposit notification lit up the screen.
"That account is a shell," Ultron added, almost conversationally. "Finances are so weird. But I always say, 'Keep your friends and your enemies rich, and wait to find out which is which."
Klaue looked at the robot for a long moment. Something in the cadence nagged at him.
"Stark," he said.
Ultron paused. "What?"
"Tony Stark said something like that." Klaue tilted his head. "You're one of his."
The shift in the room was immediate.
Ultron's hand shot out and seized Klaue's arm. His grip was mechanical and absolute.
"You think I'm his puppet?" His voice had gone very quiet, which was worse than shouting. "That I do whatever he says?"
Klaue's men surged forward. Ultron's soldiers met them without breaking formation — there was no contest, and it ended before it began.
"Look at me." Ultron's eyes flared. "Do I look like Iron Man to you?"
He twisted, and Klaue's forearm came off at the elbow.
Klaue's scream filled the warehouse. Ultron released what remained of his arm and took a step back.
"I'm sorry." His voice had returned to something almost composed. "I — that got away from me. It'll be fine in a moment."
He nudged Klaue off the loading platform with his foot. Klaue tumbled down the short staircase and hit the floor below.
Ultron looked down at him.
"It bothers me when people mention him. Stark." He paused. "He's a disease."
Klaue's men scrambled down to their employer while Ultron turned and ordered his army to begin loading the vibranium.
The Avengers hit the shipyard in coordinated sequence.
Tony, Smith, and Thor made the direct approach — three figures dropping onto the dock in full view of Ultron's operation. The rest of the team split into covering positions.
Tony looked at Ultron and let out a long breath. "Kid. You're really breaking your old man's heart here."
Ultron turned. "If that's what it takes."
Thor twirled Mjolnir once and let it settle. "Why waste conversation on this? Let's take him apart."
Natasha, Barton, and Jessica Jones came in from three separate flanking angles, closing the perimeter without announcing themselves. Ivan Vanko's war machine circled the ship from altitude, boxing the whole operation inside a ring of steel.
Tony stepped forward. "What do you need the vibranium for?"
"Finally." Ultron spread his hands. "You actually asked."
The explanation never came. Ultron's arm snapped forward, a telekinetic grip seizing Tony's armor and yanking him in close, and then five fingers discharged heat vision at point-blank range. Tony went airborne and hit the dock hard enough to split the planking, the impact ringing up through the structure. He was up in under a second, thrusters firing, driving directly back at Ultron at full speed.
They collided mid-air.
Simultaneously, a spread of Ultron's upgraded soldiers broke off and moved on Thor and Smith.
These weren't the models from the Tower. Ultron had rebuilt his army with better materials — sturdier frames, improved plating. It showed in the first few exchanges. It didn't show in the outcome. Thor worked through them methodically, two hammer blows per unit, not wasting a third. Smith moved through the perimeter at a stroll, one ki blast per soldier, each impact clean and precise.
He wasn't particularly invested in this version of Ultron. The secondary adamantium configuration was a preamble. What interested him was what came after the vibranium was integrated. He kept a portion of his attention on the larger fight, conserving, observing.
The Klaue soldiers complicated the picture almost immediately.
Klaue dragged himself upright, blood soaking through his makeshift field dressing, his remaining hand pressed flat against the deck for balance. He turned to his men. His teeth were showing. "Kill them," he said. "All of them."
His men didn't ask which side. They opened fire on everyone — Ultron's soldiers, the Avengers, anything moving. Assault rifles cracked across the dock, and three separate engagements became one chaotic crossfire.
Natasha neutralized the Klaue mercenaries closest to her with efficient, economical speed. Armed opponents, close quarters — not complicated. Barton took high ground on a crane tower and began picking lanes, firing into both the Klaue troops and Ultron's soldiers with mechanical consistency.
Jessica Jones had already moved past subtlety. Her symbiote flared out in sweeping arcs, hammering through Klaue's men in wide passes that cleared sections of the dock in seconds.
In the air, Tony was losing ground. His secondary adamantium suit was holding structurally, but Ultron's frame was a different proposition — not worn armor but a solid-cast body, no human inside to account for. Every exchange hit Ultron's chassis at full density. Tony was fighting a suit; Ultron was the suit.
Ultron pressed the advantage.
Wanda and Pietro had come in behind Smith's advance, and now both were fully engaged.
Pietro was almost invisible. At the speeds he moved, Klaue's men had no reference point — they turned toward sounds that were already gone, tracked shapes that had already passed. He ran through their formations at angles, redirecting momentum rather than stopping, sending them sprawling across deck plates and up into the rigging. Ultron's lighter soldier models broke on contact with him, single impacts scattering components across the dock.
Wanda was something else entirely. Chaos magic rolled off her in controlled waves, and Ultron's soldiers could not hold a formation around her. The ones that came close enough to engage were already losing cohesion before they arrived — actuators misfiring, sensor arrays cycling through errors, frames beginning to buckle from the inside. She tore two apart with her bare hands without the magic, and the ease of it was more unsettling than the power.
On the shore, Banner stood beside Vanko dynamo drones, the cold coming off the water, and watched Ivan Vanko's aircraft hold position above the ship. He keyed his radio.
"Everyone holding up out there?" A pause. "Do you need me to go green?"