Black Star: The Legend Begins

丅𝔀𝓔︎𝓷𝐓︎ⓨ︎-丅𝔥я︎𝓔︎𝓔︎

LET’S load them up,” Steve orders as the first lifeboat touches down.

As more lifeboats become airborne, they begin to attract the attention of the robots. The bots start to swarm them as they fly to Sokovia. Just as they’re about to start pulling the lifeboats apart, repulsor blasts explode them one by one. A familiar suit flies around the side of the helicarrier.

“Uncle Rhodey!” you shout.

Rhodey flies right through a robot, destroying it (plus two more) in a brilliant explosion.

“Yes!” he exclaims. “Now this is gonna be a good story.”

“Yup. If you live to tell it,” Tony adds, flying up next to him.

Rhodey scoffs. “You think I can’t hold my own?”

“We get through this, I’ll hold your own.”

“You had to make it weird.” You can hear the eye roll in Rhodey’s voice.

“You do know who your best friend is, right?” you ask.

“Good to know you called the kid to the fight before me,” Rhodey says.

“Hey, she was available,” Tony replies defensively.

You snicker as you order AVIS to pull up heat signatures for the surrounding buildings. An elementary school still looks to be full, so you fly over there while AVIS activates your translator. Everyone is clustered together in the cafeteria, the faculty trying to calm down their terrified students despite looking terrified themselves.

“Okay, people!” you announce. “I’ll get you all out of here, I promise. Teachers, gather up your students, and we’ll go… let’s go five classes at a time. First five classes, follow me!”

The five teachers closest to you gather up their students, following you out the door to the makeshift loading bay for the lifeboats. Once they’re all in, you go back to the school, and make three more trips until the school is completely emptied. Then you return to scanning the nearby buildings, discovering the senior center has quite a few signatures inside. The nurses and seniors fill up the last seats in the lifeboat you were working on, so you help the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents inside prepare it for flight. As it flies back to the helicarrier, you see a robot smash into one of the engines, decimating it. The now unbalanced lifeboat begins to sink towards the ground on one end. You scream and, despite knowing you don’t have the strength required to steady it, are about to fly over when a red blur slams up into the damaged engine, lifting it so it’s level with the other three.

“Don’t worry, Lex. I got them,” Tony reassures you.

“Thanks, Dad,” you say, even though you know it’s his job to help.

He stays underneath the lifeboat until it’s safely back in the helicarrier. You watch it go until you can’t see it anymore, then return to scanning the buildings. A grocery store still has some people in it, but before you can go over there, Tony’s voice fills your ears.

“Thor, I got a plan!”

“We’re out of time. They’re coming for the core,” is Thor’s response.

“Rhodey, get the rest of the people onboard that carrier,” Tony orders.

“On it.”

“Avengers, time to work for a living.”

“The hell do you think we’ve been doing?” you ask. “Eating chicken nuggets?”

You fly over to the church, with Peter swinging close behind you. When you arrive, Tony, Vision, and Thor are already there. Pietro runs in shortly after you, followed by Steve, who explodes through a wall along with two broken robots. When Clint comes in with Wanda in tow, Pietro runs up to them.

“You good?” he asks Wanda.

“Yeah,” she says.

As you all begin to fight, you realize two people are missing. Tony realizes this at the same time.

“Romanoff,” he says into comms. “You and Banner better not be playing hide the zucchini.”

“Relax, shellhead,” Natasha responds cooly. “Not all of us can fly.”

And that’s when a yellow plow truck comes crashing into the gate outside the church, with Natasha inside. She climbs out and walks over to join the rest of you.

“What’s the drill?” Nat asks.

“This is the drill.” Tony points to the core. “If Ultron gets a hand on the core, we lose.”

Hulk drops down through the roof, breaking two robots as he does so.

And as if all of you gathering was a cue, Ultron comes floating down from the sky.

“Is that the best you can do?!” Thor screams at him.

Ultron holds up a hand. From every direction, robots come to him. They fly down, crawl from beneath cars, walk out of damaged buildings. Soon, there’s more than a hundred robots gathered beneath Ultron.

“You had to ask.” Steve sighs, glaring at Thor.

“This is the best I can do.” Ultron holds his arms out above the robot crowd. “This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me. How can you possibly hope to stop me?”

Tony shrugs. “Well, like the old man said.” He and Steve look at each other. “Together.”