[Third Person Pov]
Both Tony and Melissa charged at Ultron—and the murderous machine hurled himself at them just as aggressively. Ultron's fist cut through the air like a cannonball aimed straight at Tony's face, but Tony caught the motion at the last possible instant and redirected the blow past his shoulder. The instant the attack shifted off-course, Melissa vaulted upward, twisting mid-air as she drove her heel across Ultron's jaw with enough force to make sparks jump from the metal.
Ultron retaliated immediately. He snapped forward and headbutted Tony with brutal precision. The crack echoed across the rooftop as blood burst from Tony's nose and streamed down his lips. He didn't even pause—Tony surged upward with a vicious uppercut that snapped Ultron's head back. At the same time Melissa slid between Ultron's legs in a perfect sweep and hammered a kick into the back of his knee.
The machine buckled. Forced down to a kneel, Ultron's head snapped toward Tony in irritation—only for Tony's fist to smash into his cheek, twisting his head the opposite direction where Melissa was already waiting. She drilled a punch clean into the side of his face, metal ringing from the impact.
Ultron jerked back, hopping his head out of range, and lashed out. His counterpunch slammed into Melissa's face with enough force to send her stumbling, her eyes watering as she fought the dizziness.
He rose to his full height again, and the rooftop exploded into motion.
All three moved in an intense, blistering exchange—blows, blocks, feints, and counterstrikes fluidly chaining together. Tony and Melissa kept pace only through the combined miracle of the Super-Soldier Serum and Extremis. Their muscles fired like coiled springs, their reflexes sharpening beyond any human threshold. They weren't moving fast—they were moving at a speed that was borderline supernatural, weaving around Ultron in synchronized, practiced rhythm.
Against almost any other opponent, even without their suits, Tony and Melissa would have overwhelmed the battlefield. Coordinated. Efficient. Deadly. But this wasn't "anyone"—this was Ultron.
A being built to evolve.
Ultron's forearms split open with a hiss, metal reconfiguring into twin sword-like blades and integrated weapons designed with one purpose: maiming and execution.
He slashed toward Melissa, but Tony shoved her head down, the blade whistling over her hair by inches. Tony then used her lowered position as leverage, planting a foot on her back and launching himself forward, drop-kicking Ultron and forcing the machine to stagger several heavy steps backward.
Tony landed in a crouch. Melissa immediately planted a foot on his shoulder and sprang upward, twisting into a mid-air triple-kick combo that hammered against Ultron's chest and head. The two moved like a single unit—one breathing, one striking, one supporting the next attack without hesitation.
But Ultron was adapting.
He wasn't just being hit—he was learning. Tracking their patterns. Mapping their timing. Adjusting.
Metal arms blurred as Ultron retaliated, his sword-hands slicing through the air. Tony and Melissa tried to dodge, but the machine's predictive counters grew sharper—faster. Blades grazed them with every movement. Cuts opened on their arms, across their legs, along their cheeks. Thin lines of blood trailed down their skin and soaked into their torn clothing.
Tony leaned back as far as his spine allowed him to evade a decapitating strike, yet the blade still kissed the skin beneath his eye, carving a deep bloody line. Thick streams of crimson slid down his face, but he refused to flinch. Pain was nothing now—only survival mattered.
Both he and Melissa were already brutalized. Their skin had bloomed into a constellation of bruises—angry purples and blacks covering their ribs and limbs. In contrast, Ultron's damage was practically nonexistent; dents formed and repaired themselves within seconds, metal smoothing over as though mocking their efforts.
With a brutal shove, Ultron pinned Tony against the rooftop railing and began hammering punches into his face, each blow louder than the last. Melissa sprinted in, twisted her body mid-air, hooked an arm around Ultron's head, and kicked the back of his knees. She tore him sideways and slammed him into the ground.
She leapt high, fist cocked back for a finishing strike—but Ultron rolled with inhuman smoothness. Melissa's fist crashed into the rooftop with enough force to crack the concrete and tear her knuckles open, blood splattering across the fractures.
A bright flash lit the rooftop—then a repulsor blast ripped through her chest and hurled her across the rooftop. She slammed into a ventilation unit so hard the metal dented inward, and she cried out sharply, the sound cut short as breath fled her lungs.
Ultron didn't pause. He rocketed forward, knee first, and drove the blunt metal spike of it into Melissa's stomach. The impact folded her over instantly. A thick stream of blood erupted from her mouth, splattering the floor as she collapsed, gagging and trembling.
Tony was still slumped against the railing. Blood soaked through his hair, matting it against his skull, and his face was nearly unrecognizable—swollen, torn, smeared with crimson. His eyes were glassy, wandering, his breaths ragged and wet.
Then, slowly, Tony lifted his face toward the artificial sky.
And through the mask of blood and swelling…
a grin stretched across his ruined features.
Ultron's arm shifted like liquid metal, reforming into a long gleaming blade. He raised it over Melissa's kneeling form, the steel catching the artificial light above them. Melissa looked up at him through one half-closed eye, her breath shallow, her mouth parting as she struggled to speak.
Ultron cut her off instantly.
"If I had any regard for sentiment," he said coldly, "I would have asked if you had any last words. I clearly do not. So don't bother."
"—" Melissa didn't even finish the breath that shaped her final word.
Ultron's blade came down in one swift, merciless arc.
The sword sliced through her neck with mechanical precision. Her head separated cleanly, flying through the air as a halo of severed hair. A geyser of blood erupted from the stump of her neck, spilling forward as her body collapsed without resistance.
Her head hit the floor with a dull thud and rolled slowly, gradually losing momentum until it lay still—lifeless, silent, eyes dim.
Ultron's blade compressed, reshaping back into a metallic hand now dripping red. Calmly, almost leisurely, he crouched down and picked up Melissa's head by her hair, lifting it so the strands slid between his fingers.
He turned to gloat—only to see Tony standing several paces away, his posture strange.
Tony's head was lowered. His face hidden beneath tangled, matted hair. His body was trembling—not with fear, but with something colder. Something sharper. A frown carved itself into his battered features.
Ultron lifted Melissa's head higher.
"Care to comment on how you feel?" he mused. "What's going through your head? Devastation? Wrath? A deep, hollow sadness? Perhaps a desperate thirst for vengeance? All of it is meaningless in the face of overwhelming power."
"I agree," Tony said.
His tone was disturbingly calm. Flat. Almost emotionless.
"In front of overwhelming power, there's no need to feel such useless emotions."
"…Pardon?" Ultron's voice glitched with confusion. That was not the response he had predicted. "Your eyes…"
Tony slowly lifted his head.
He swept his blood-streaked hair aside, revealing two red mechanical eyes—intricate, shifting systems of gears and light, constantly rotating, constantly computing.
"It took me a while to get everything sorted," Tony said, pressing a hand to his temple as though steadying his own thoughts. "I lost count of how many times I had to split my mind into separate processes."
The red mechanical irises whirred.
"One thought focused on the fight—calculating what moves to use, what angles gave the best results. Another handled dodging, predicting your strikes. A third maintained perfect motor control—every punch, every step, every shift in balance. Another monitored the world around us, decoding the ones and zeroes behind the simulation we're standing in."
He tapped the side of his head.
"Eventually, I deciphered everything. I learned to read binary as easily as English. And if I can read it…"
His mechanical eyes pulsed—glowing brighter.
"…then I can manipulate it."
Tony dragged a hand down his face, and for a moment his features flickered—glitching like corrupted data. When they stabilized, every bruise, every cut, every smear of blood had been erased. His face was whole again. Restored.
Ultron stared, stunned.
"Impossible…"
Tony stepped forward, head raised, hair falling neatly across his forehead.
"I am the impossible."
With a single command—unspoken but absolute—Melissa's body dissolved. Her decapitated corpse and her severed head both broke apart into cascading streams of glowing ones and zeroes. The pieces flowed toward Tony like digital dust.
The code merged, recompiled—
—and Melissa's body reformed from head to toe. Breath filled her lungs as her eyes snapped open and she gasped violently, clutching her throat.
"You couldn't figure out how to do that earlier?!" she yelled hoarsely, voice cracking. "I thought I was actually dead!"
Tony smirked, eyes dimming back to a calmer glow.
"Well," he said lightly, "now we can both say we've died and come back to life."
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