[Third Person Pov]
With the destruction of Ultron's core—and the absolute annihilation of his primary consciousness—every remaining Ultron unit and sentry scattered across the globe began to fall silent. One by one their lights dimmed, their limbs froze, and their metallic husks slumped lifelessly where they stood. The world exhaled as the great machine hive-mind finally collapsed.
Far away, within a secret hideout deep within a private island—the same one Saiki had dragged All For One to—Saiki hovered several feet above the scorched ground. Blood trickled down his side, mixing with the soot and burn marks that streaked across his body, each wound a reminder of his brutal clash with Ultron. His breathing was sharp, strained, yet his presence radiated overwhelming force.
Electricity coiled around Saiki's hands like living serpents. Electromagnetic energy pulsed so intensely within him that it leaked from his eyes, his irises rotating like interlocking gears struggling to contain the storm inside him. He raised both hands to the sky, and the world responded instantly. Clouds churned overhead, dragged into a violent spiral as they darkened with raw electrical charge.
With a single fluid motion of his arms, thunder detonated behind him—an earth-shaking roar—and a jagged spear of lightning tore down from the heavens. It slammed into Ultron's collapsing body with the fury of a divine judgment, driving the android hard into the ground. The impact cracked the earth, leaving a smoldering crater.
As Ultron absorbed the lightning strike, his glowing red eyes flickered violently before dimming… dimming… and finally fading into a cold, lifeless gray. Then his body fell limp, crashing into the dirt like a puppet severed from its strings.
Saiki lowered himself gradually, boots touching the ground with barely a whisper. His eyes narrowed, suspicion sharpening his expression. "That was far too easy," he muttered, scanning Ultron's motionless frame from head to toe. Every instinct screamed that something was off.
Still, Saiki wasn't a man who wasted opportunities.
He extended his hands. Power surged through him, bright and wild, until the air around him trembled. His energy engulfed Ultron's corpse and began to dismantle it. Nanobots cracked apart, breaking down into glittering fragments like metallic ashes caught in a rising wind.
The freed nanites swarmed upward in a spiraling cyclone, crackling with electricity as they circled Saiki. More and more rose from Ultron's dissolving body, feeding the storm until it grew dense enough to swallow Saiki completely from sight.
Then the cloud shifted.
The nanites clung to Saiki's ankles, his calves, his legs—crawling up his body like a living metallic tide. Piece by piece they layered themselves over him, forming plates, segments, and intricate circuitry. When the final remnants of Ultron's body joined the swarm, the cloud thinned.
Saiki stepped forward.
He now wore Ultron's body as a new, sleek suit of armor—reborn and reshaped around him. As he walked toward the facility where All For One rested, the last strands of nanites zipped across the air and clicked into place behind his head, sealing into a fully formed helmet.
Energy arced along the suit's surface, dancing like lightning across living steel. The dull, lifeless eye sockets of the helmet sparked once, then ignited into a vibrant blue glow—steady, powerful, alive. The nanites locked together with a final metallic snap, and Saiki tightened his fist, the servos humming with newfound strength.
---
Meanwhile…
The virtual world around Tony Stark trembled, its artificial sky cracking like glass under pressure. He glanced at Melissa with urgency.
"We need to hurry," Tony said, voice tight. "With Ultron's core gone, this place won't hold together much longer."
Melissa swiped her hair away from her face and nodded, a grin tugging at her lips.
"Yeah, yeah—but wow, did smashing that oversized toaster feel good."
Tony rolled his eyes, though a smirk betrayed him. He summoned their spacecraft with a thought; the simulation obeyed instantly, fabricating the vessel in a swirl of glowing polygons before solidifying into polished metal. Both he and Melissa jumped inside and strapped themselves into their seats.
"Wait—hold on!" Tony blurted, freezing mid-motion.
Melissa turned sharply. "What? Tony, this is not the time to get distracted."
Tony stared ahead, gears turning behind his eyes. "If we leave the simulation through quantum tunneling… does that mean everything we create here becomes one-hundred-percent real on the outside?"
Melissa blinked, processing. "Probably? I mean… we're literally traveling through the quantum realm, so physics already took the day off. Anything's possible."
She squinted at him. "Why? What are you planning?"
Tony didn't answer. Instead, a slow, manic grin stretched across his face.
"Hahaha… oh this is perfect," he cackled. "I'm going to bring out the one virtual thing everyone, at some point in their lives, wished was real!"
He threw his head back with gleeful, borderline villainous laughter. "Hahahaha!"
"Wha—?" Melissa blinked rapidly, her face a picture of pure confusion.
She looked around as glowing strings of binary—1s and 0s—began spiraling into existence around them. Lines of code drifted like falling snowflakes before curving inward and condensing. One cluster floated down toward her lap, slowly folding in on itself and taking the shape of a small creature. Three others materialized near Tony, forming silhouettes that grew more defined by the second.
Melissa opened her mouth but no words came out.
Before her eyes, the code solidified into a small brown fox-like creature with huge eyes and an impossibly fluffy tail. It tilted its head up at her, blinked once, then let out the softest, most adorable purring chirp she had ever heard in her life.
Tony's three creatures finished forming as well, all sitting beside him like excited pets waiting for instructions.
"Tony… just what are these things?" Melissa demanded, her voice caught somewhere between panic and disbelief.
"Eevee!!" squeaked the creature in her lap, puffing its chest proudly.
"They're Pokémon!!" Tony declared with the pure, unfiltered joy of a child who had just been handed the entire world. Without missing a beat, he slammed his foot onto the acceleration pedal. The ship lurched forward as the fabric of the virtual space around them began to shatter like fragile glass, revealing a vast black void beneath.
"Now come on everyone—let's go home!!"
Tony's Pokémon burst into excited chirps and roars. Melissa, meanwhile, looked like she had abruptly fallen into someone else's fever dream. But as the Eevee in her lap nuzzled against her stomach with a happy coo, any argument or disbelief she had started melting instantly.
She let out a helpless laugh. "Tony… seriously, what on earth are these things?"
"I'll explain everything once we're back," Tony said, grinning so wide he looked close to tearing up. "But for now—meet Gible, Beldum, and, of course, you already met Eevee."
Melissa stared at the creatures with a mixture of distress and resignation. Then she remembered Tony was a reincarnator and sighed, blaming that for his sudden weirdness. "…Right. Okay. That explains… something, I guess."
Tony leaned forward and tapped a sequence of buttons. "Momo, do you copy? I repeat, do you copy?"
"Tony!!" Momo's voice crackled through the communicator, thick with relief. "Thank goodness you're alright! When you stopped responding I thought— I was so worried— Tony, what happened? What's going on? Did you take Ultron down?"
"Yes," Tony answered confidently. "Melissa stabbed a sword straight through his core. Ultron's gone for good. We're heading back now—and I'm calling because the communicator I gave you also doubles as the anchor point for our return. We're going to appear near your location, so stand clear."
Melissa took the cue, sliding her hands over the panels in front of her. The ship hummed as she activated the shrinking sequence, the hull shimmering as they compressed to microscopic size. Together they plunged into the Quantum Realm, breaking through the thin membrane that separated virtual constructs from physical truth.
A bright flash swallowed them.
---
Back on the surface…
Everyone standing near Momo had been listening to the call—and the moment Tony warned them, they all took several hurried steps backward. Momo held the communicator out at arm's length, pointing it toward an open clearing.
The air around the device crackled.
A spark—small, but bright—flared at its center.
Then, without warning, Tony's and Melissa's ship burst out of a tear in space like a bullet fired from nowhere, rapidly expanding from microscopic to full size within seconds. The sudden displacement of air created a violent gust that sent several people stumbling back, shielding their faces.
The ship hovered for a moment before Tony and Melissa steadied it, guiding it gently down until it landed with a controlled metallic thud.
The hatch hissed, releasing a soft, cold fog as it slowly opened.
Tony and Melissa stepped out, both still impeccably dressed despite everything they'd been through. Melissa cradled the two Eevees in her arms, their fluffy tails swaying happily. Tony carried Gible under one arm and Beldum hovering loyally beside him like a metallic guardian.
They descended the ramp with complete confidence.
"Mission successfully accomplished~," Tony announced smugly, lifting his chin with theatrical flair.
[End of Volume 4]
A/N: Oof what a way to end the volume, am I right guys?
Now of course, you know all know what this means right? Everyone's favorite moment of the volume! Yay! Mind you this volume has been going on since chapter 188 since I'm pretty sure Tony got back from the MCU, so a lot of good stuff happened. I'm curious what your favorite moments were.
Mine was either Tony getting advice about love from his parents. I feel like I did their interaction well, or when Tony pranked Melissa during the MCU marathon and he pretended to disintegrate, although I will say the end battle with Ultron where it pans out from the chessboard and Tony and Melissa are sitting together is very cool in my opinion.
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