Chapter 178: Feeding

[Third Person's PoV] 

Wanda and Tony weren't the only ones dealing with the Ultron Sentinels. Melissa and Pietro were also tearing through them—one in the air, the other a blue blur on the ground.

Melissa sent a massive tendril from her symbiote, stabbing it straight through a Sentinel before splitting it apart, tearing the machine in two. She unleashed repulsor beams in all directions while her tendrils lashed out, cutting through enemies with ruthless precision.

Not far from her, Pietro was a streak of blue, darting between the Sentinels, breaking them apart with sheer speed. He grabbed pieces of fallen Sentinels and hurled them at others, using their own wreckage as weapons. As more tried to target him with their lasers, he zipped out of the way, always one step ahead.

Melissa's tendrils shot toward the blasters in the Sentinels' hands, assimilating their tech into her symbiote. From her back, six blaster tendrils emerged, aiming in all directions. Charged with bio-electricity, they pulsed with an electric yellow light before opening fire.

Rapid shots flew everywhere, some releasing concentrated beams of electricity. Pietro had to duck and roll under one, narrowly avoiding it as the beams tore through the Sentinels, shattering them.

"Oi! Watch where you aim that thing! It looks badass, but don't fry me, little girl!" he shouted.

"Little girl?" Melissa raised an eyebrow before retorting, "You have superspeed. You'll be fine. Just don't get in the way of my shots."

"In the way of your shots? You're shooting everywhere blindly!" Pietro snapped in exasperation.

Melissa fired a beam that zipped past Pietro's face, hitting a Sentinel behind him just as it was about to attack. It exploded into pieces.

"None of my shots are blind," she scoffed.

"Right, of course," Pietro replied sarcastically. "Let's just keep moving—I need to make sure my sister is safe."

"Your sister's with Tony. She's the safest one here," Melissa scoffed, her tendrils merging two blasters together, increasing the size and power of her energy beams.

"I thought Stark went to church to have a chat with Ultron. And no one is ever really safe next to a Stark," Pietro sneered.

"My Tony. There are two Tony Starks," Melissa corrected.

"Really?" Pietro tilted his head in confusion as he swept the leg of a Sentinel, grabbed its firing arm, and redirected its lasers at the others. "Well, either way, he's still a Stark, so my point still stands!" With that, he sped off toward Wanda.

Melissa sighed and shook her head.

…

Meanwhile, underground…

Thor, Natasha, and Bruce were also fighting their way through the Ultron Sentinels.

Natasha switched her weapons to lethal mode, using her suit's zero-gravity and invisibility to her advantage. She soared through the air, raining down red concussive blasts from her pistols, shattering Sentinels into pieces. As she landed, she rolled and vanished from sight, reappearing only to slam her weapons into the Sentinels' faces, decapitating them with brutal efficiency.

Thor swung Mjolnir in rapid arcs, generating massive bolts of electricity. He extended his arm, and lightning whipped forward, tearing through the ground and frying the Sentinels in its path.

Grabbing the hilt of his bladeless sword, he pressed Mjolnir against it, sending volts of electricity coursing through it. When he retracted the hilt, a massive greatsword of pure lightning emerged.

With Mjolnir spinning in one hand, he charged forward, cleaving through the hordes of Ultron Sentinels, his sword crackling with divine power.

Bruce, meanwhile, carried a massive two-handed plasma cannon he had salvaged from Ultron's workbench. His expression was a mix of panic and determination as he fired massive blasts, punching giant holes through the Sentinels. He quickly recharged and continued covering both Thor and Natasha's backs, keeping their enemies at bay.

Bruce kept walking backward, firing behind him, until he suddenly crashed into Thor. The Asgardian had stopped in his tracks, standing completely still.

Confused, Bruce turned around and saw Natasha in a similar state. Both of them wore stunned, silent expressions.

Following their gaze, Bruce's eyes widened as he saw the lower half of Ultron's doomsday machine. It spanned across the entire ceiling of the underground system, its sheer size overwhelming.

…

Meanwhile…

At that moment, Vision had appeared, successfully blocking Ultron from the internet servers. Enraged, Ultron slammed Vision into the ground before turning back to his massive machine. With a sinister grin, he twisted the top of the device, activating it.

…

Back underground, Bruce and the others watched as the massive machine pulsed with a deep blue light. The moment it powered on, Bruce's mind pieced it together.

His breath hitched, eyes widening in horror. "He's trying to create a meteorite!" he blurted out. "He's planning on turning Sokovia into a meteor and recreating the extinction of the dinosaurs!"

"What?" Natasha asked, shocked. "How do you know that!?"

"That blue light—it's electromagnetism," Bruce explained quickly. "He's using Vibranium to manipulate the electromagnetic field. With a machine this big, he's not planning something small. That much power could encase an entire country—this entire country! And look at those thrusters! He's going to send Sokovia high into the sky so that when it falls, the impact will be just like the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. Only this time, it's not the dinosaurs going extinct…" Bruce trailed off grimly.

"Then we need to get out of here," Natasha said, retracting her weapons back into her wrists. "The only way to stop this is to take down Ultron."

But when she turned back to Bruce, she saw him frozen in place, his expression puzzled.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"It's on…" Bruce murmured. "But nothing's happening."

Bruce wasn't the only one realizing it.

Up above, Ultron's triumphant expression flickered into confusion. He looked down at his machine, then back at Stark.

"It seems we're having a bit of… technical difficulty," Ultron muttered. "Just a moment."

He twisted the activation switch off, then back on. Nothing. He did it again. Still nothing. He repeated the process several times. 

Ultron growled in frustration before kicking the machine. "Why isn't this stupid thing working!?" he roared.

"Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in again?" Stark quipped, smirking.

"Try blowing on it; maybe it collected dust," Tony added with a laugh.

Everyone turned to see him sitting on the upper wall opening of the church, swinging his feet casually.

"Kid, what are you doing here?" Stark asked curiously. "Shouldn't you be with the Maximoff girl?"

Tony shrugged. "She's with Hawkeye, Cap, Melissa, and her brother, taking care of the Sentinels." He pointed behind him.

Ultron's eyes narrowed. His plan, his machine—it should have worked. The only way it wouldn't is if there was an unexpected variable. His gaze snapped back to Tony.

"You…" Ultron's voice was laced with suspicion. "What have you done to my machine?"

Tony only chuckled before holding out his hand toward the device. A deep, grating sound echoed through the chamber—the screeching of metal ripping apart, the crumbling of stone and wires snapping loose.

From beneath the ground, a massive black metal sphere emerged, writhing with tendrils. It flew through the air and landed effortlessly in Tony's hand.

"You really shouldn't have discarded my little piece of symbiote earlier," Tony mused, smirking. "It's bad for the environment to litter, you know."

Ultron's robotic eyes flickered with realization.

"In order to grow, my little guy needed an energy source," Tony continued, tossing the metal orb up and catching it again. "So, naturally, it crawled its way to the biggest power core it could find…" His grin turned malicious.

"My suit says—thank you for the meal."

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A/N: I uploaded a new fic check it out... please