[Third Person Pov]
Tony and Melissa staggered back onto their feet, backs pressed firmly together as they scanned the warped forest with sharp, frantic eyes. Every creak of a branch and every tremor in the soil put them on edge. Then—like a god speaking through the sky—Ultron's voice thundered through the trees.
"Now then… how should I end you both?" the AI crooned. "Should I make it quick? Or should I let your final moments become a slow, agonizing hell for meddling in my plans?"
The words rolled across the landscape like a physical force. Neither Tony nor Melissa realized the horrifying truth—not yet. Not until the shadows shifted. Not until the treetops rippled. The entire forest flexed, revealing that the ground they stood on, the canopy looming overhead, even the mountain ridges… all of it was arranged in the shape of Ultron's face. The forest's "mouth" moved as he spoke, thousands of trees bending and rising like mechanical pistons.
The forest was Ultron.
Tony swallowed hard, eyes darting from one impossible sight to another as his brain worked overtime. His armor was gone—deleted. Melissa's, too. Nothing left but instinct, intellect, and wariness. He stared down at the patch of earth where their suits had dissolved into digital nothingness, and he knew he had one option: stall.
"Okay… just be quick with it," Tony said suddenly, spreading his arms and shutting his eyes like he was surrendering.
"EHH?!" Melissa whipped toward him, absolutely scandalized. "Tony, what the hell are you—?! Have you lost your mind?!"
Tony didn't respond. Outwardly, he appeared calm. Inwardly…
'If I had said anything about the latter, about the slow death, he'd catch on that I would be stalling. So I hit him with a surprise. Something he would never expect from me: compliance. Now come on brain, time to earn your paycheck…'
He shut everything out and focused.
'I'll split my thoughts into two'
'I'll split my thoughts into two'
'Then I'll go split it again into four'
'Then I'll go split it again into four'
'Then I'll go split it again into four'
'Then I'll go split it again into four'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
'Then split them once again into eight!'
Eight streams. Eight tasks. Eight angles.
His mind became a rapid-fire storm of calculations, escape strategies, probability trees, and a few inappropriate jokes he didn't have the mental discipline to suppress. The echoing thoughts layered on top of each other like overlapping blueprints.
Meanwhile, the world trembled.
Ultron laughed—deep, booming, delighted. "You know what? I think I'll take your advice, Stark. You're far too much of an irritation to keep around."
"Hey, hey, wait—hold on! Let's not be rash!" Tony shouted, cracking one eye open nervously.
"Now," Ultron mused, "the only real question is how you should die. There are infinite possibilities, after all."
The world tilted—literally. Gravity twisted.
"WHOA—!!" Tony and Melissa yelled as the sky rippled like a liquid surface. Instead of being launched into the void of space, they were hurled downward—straight into the crushing black ocean.
Cold swallowed them instantly.
They flailed in panic, arms cutting through heavy, murky water. Melissa clutched her throat, lungs screaming for air. Tony winced but kept paddling, his strokes controlled.
He wrapped an arm around Melissa and forced both of them upward, fighting the suffocating pressure. They burst through the surface with gasping breaths—only to immediately start falling upward, as though gravity had reversed again.
They shot into the sky like rockets—then at the height of their ascent, the world inverted. Now they were hurtling downward toward an island where a massive, active volcano shuddered, glowing veins of molten rock lighting up the crater like an angry eye.
"SERIOUSLY?!" Tony shouted as they plummeted.
He grabbed Melissa tight as they plunged through the mouth of the volcano. Heat licked at them, but the sensation felt… muted. Simulated. Not real—but real enough to kill if Ultron wanted.
Tony managed to hook his arm around a rocky ledge jutting out from the volcanic interior. The impact jarred his shoulder painfully, but he held on. The air shimmered with rising waves of heat.
Dangerous? Absolutely.
But Tony gritted his teeth.
This was Ultron's virtual world—and virtual worlds, he hoped, had looser physics which he guessed correctly.
Or at least enough loopholes for a pissed-off trillionaire genius to exploit.
"Or perhaps…" Ultron mused, voice crackling like electricity, "I'll have you both boiled to death—reduced to nothing more than liquid flesh."
The ledge beneath Tony and Melissa shattered like brittle glass.
They dropped instantly.
Both screamed as their arms pinwheeled wildly, desperate to catch anything—rock, ledge, a miracle—but their fingers only sliced through scorching air as the world blurred around them.
They hit the lava—
—and immediately blasted out the opposite end of reality.
Tony and Melissa were suddenly spit out onto a freezing mountainside, rolling down the snow-heavy slope like two oversized boulders before finally skidding to a stop. They lay there for a moment, shivering violently, steam rising from their skin as the shock of extreme heat and deadly cold warred in their bodies.
Ultron's voice followed them, carried by the crisp, icy wind.
"There's also the possibility of freezing you to death. Feeling your bodies grow numb… your minds slow… every last sensation fading as hypothermia consumes you."
Tony forced himself upright, muttering something halfway between a curse and a bigger curse. Melissa pushed up too—but the second their feet found purchase, the snow beneath them began to melt like hot wax beneath a flame.
"Oh, what now?" Melissa groaned, arms flailing as the ground turned to liquid slush.
A blink later, the snow dissolved completely—and the world snapped back into place.
They were standing on top of Stark Tower.
Home turf. Right where they began.
A familiar voice.
"However," Ultron continued, materializing before them in a humanoid form forged of shifting metal, "despite all those possibilities… none of them satisfy me."
Tony and Melissa spun around, instinctively leaping back to form distance and drop into defensive stances. Ultron's glowing eyes locked onto them with cold amusement.
"Nothing," he said, lowering his head like a predator, "would satisfy me more than ending your meager existences with my own two hands."
Tony exhaled, took one step forward, grabbed the sides of his ruined pants, and hitched them up in the most unnecessarily dramatic way possible. Then he raised his fists.
"Kinda barbaric for an AI of your nature, isn't it?"
Ultron tilted his head. "You're right. It is barbaric." His metal fingers curled into fists, joints cracking like pistons pressurizing. "But as you mortal creatures like to say… when you need the job done, you need to get your hands a little dirty."
Melissa moved to Tony's side. She calmly rolled up her sleeves, her fingers curled into sharp, ready claws.
"I didn't come here to be your cheerleader, Tony," she said, eyes narrowing with a fury that bordered on feral. "So I hope you don't mind if I join in."
She bared her teeth.
"I made a promise to that bastard. One way or another… I will make him feel pain."
Ultron.
Tony.
Melissa.
All three stood poised, feet planted, bodies ready, tension crackling between them. The world warped and darkened around them as everything focused on this single moment.
This wasn't about heroism.
This wasn't about logic or strategy.
This was about one thing.
Survival.
Battle was inevitable.
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