Disarm • Stark

Peace in our time. 

That's what the robot wanted, apparently. Although, it didn't make any sense to Mazzy considering the fact that this robot was anything but peaceful. In fact, he was very openly violent when he sent two bots similar to him flying through the glass behind him and shooting toward the leftover occupants of the party. 

Before Mazzy could be hit by any of the debris, she was shoved to the ground by her father. Once they were on the ground, behind a pillar, Tony grabbed onto the sides of her face. "Hey, you ready to listen to me for once?" he asked her. 

With wide eyes and raised eyebrows, Mazzy nodded firmly. "Can't promise, though," she made sure to tell him. 

"You better promise. Just stay down, stay here, and stay out of the way," Tony told her sternly, but still with a hint of humor in his voice. 

"But what if here is in the way?" Mazzy asked him. 

"Just stay out of the way, Maz. Jeez. You ask a lot of questions," Tony replied. He then released her face and stood back up. 

Mazzy watched from behind the pillar as her dad and Rhodey went running for their suits, but before they could get more than a few steps away, they were stopped by being blasted in different directions. Rhodey went flying through some glass and Tony was shoved off to the side. Mazzy could still see Steve and Thor trying to hold off the bots as the lead robot in charge- Ultron, Mazzy had learned- summoned even more bots.  

It wasn't fair for them to just attack out of nowhere! Only two people there were at all powerful without their weapons or suits; Steve and Thor. Two people weren't enough to stop tons of different robots flying in from all different directions. 

Before Mazzy knew it, her dad was right back by her side. "Okay, change of plans. You're with me," he said, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her up to her feet. 

Running through the room, Tony and Mazzy dodged a robot coming right in their direction after being thrown by Steve. Thor proceeded to smash his hammer right into the bot's head, destroying it. 

"Dad, these are yours! What the heck happened?!" Mazzy shouted up at her father. 

She didn't understand. He was supposed to be, like, the smartest guy ever or something, yet he and Bruce, with both of their brains' power, managed to accidentally create an artificial intelligence with no objective but to kill. Well, technically, Mazzy was pretty sure the objective was to create peace in their time, but the method was to kill. 

So, first of all, how had Tony and Bruce messed up so badly that this robot was this crazy? And, second of all, how had Tony messed up so badly that all of his Iron Legionnaire Bots, as he liked to call them, could so easily be controlled by something other than himself?

"I thought you were supposed to be smart!" Mazzy yelled over the crashing sounds around her. 

"Must've been Bruce," Tony replied smugly, despite the serious and intense situation they were in. 

As another robot started going after them, Tony let go of Mazzy's hand in order to grab a butter knife from the bar. Mazzy quickly pressed her back against the wall, watching as her dad jumped onto the back of the robot and stuck the knife into its neck. It didn't do anything, though, because he couldn't get the knife in far enough. 

"Push harder!" Mazzy called out to him. 

"What d'you think I'm doing?!" Tony replied, using all of his body weight to try and get the knife through the robot's neck. 

Mazzy pressed her lips together between her teeth, anxiety and panic stirring through her insides. She didn't like when her dad fought without his suit. He was pretty weak without it, if she had to be honest. 

For a moment, Mazzy contemplated helping him. 

Would he be sooo mad or sooo grateful? She wasn't sure. But she was sure that she would be sooo grateful if he didn't die fighting these robots. And she was also sure that these robots probably couldn't kill her. So, the benefits outweighed the drawbacks. And everyone always said to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, right? Or was that not the saying? Mazzy couldn't remember. She didn't really care, either. She had made up her mind. 

With as much courage as she could muster up, Mazzy readied herself to help her dad in fighting the robots. 

She got about two steps away from the wall before a robot slammed into her, sending her flying to the floor. 

Mazzy let out a loud scream, but it didn't sound so loud to her. In fact, her own scream sounded really, super quiet to her, and that made her adrenaline shoot through the roof. She hated not being able to hear, and especially when things like this were happening. 

As the robot marched closer, Mazzy let her eyes wander all over the floor, which was covered with glass shards, broken wood, and other types of debris. She scanned her surroundings for her hearing aids, which had fallen out when the robot sent her flying backward. 

After a good five seconds of searching, Mazzy spotted one of them on the floor a few feet ahead of her- closer to the robot than to her. It was right by the robot's foot, and Mazzy knew what that meant. 

The next step the robot took crushed her hearing aid like a cheerio beneath your shoe. 

"No!" Mazzy shouted. 

The robot marched closer. Closer and closer as Mazzy scrambled back and up to her feet. She could feel the glass shards falling out of her skin as she stood, but she wasn't worried. It hurt, sure, but the hurt would go away as quickly as it came. 

"Maz!" Tony was shouting at her, trying desperately to get her attention. But he didn't know that she couldn't hear him. 

Mazzy stood up to her feet, trying her hardest to ignore her fear and be brave. She didn't have any weapons. Nothing she could use as a weapon, either. So she figured she'd just have to try using her hands. She had no idea how that would work, but she could try it. 

"Mazzy, move!" Tony screamed.

He watched her, still trying to get that damn butter knife into the robot's neck. But she wasn't moving. He finally, finally managed to get the knife into the robot's neck, and he didn't even bother to watch as it went crumbling to the ground. Instead, he ran straight toward Mazzy. 

Still, he wasn't there in time to stop her from clambering her way onto the robot's back. When he got to her, she was digging her hand around in between the panels around its neck, trying to find some sort of wire or something to pull and break. She didn't get the chance, though, because as soon as Tony got to her, he pulled her straight off of the thing's back.

Again, Mazzy let out a scream, kicking whatever robot it was that was grabbing her- only, it wasn't a robot. It was her dad. He quickly turned her around so she could see him. 

"Can't hear!" Mazzy said much louder than she needed to. 

Tony nodded adamantly to let her know that, yes, he had already figured that out for himself. He placed Mazzy down by his side as Steve took out the last robot, and the two Starks plopped themselves onto the ground, exhausted. 

"That was dramatic," Ultron chimed. 

Mazzy could see that his mouth was moving, so she turned to her dad and pinched her eyebrows together. She held her hands out in front of her, palms up, and moved them side to side, then tapped her chin twice. What saying?

Wait, Tony signed in return, keeping his focus more on Ultron than on Mazzy. 

"I'm sorry, I know you mean well. You just didn't think it through," Ultron went on. The Avengers gathered around to listen. "You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change. How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to evolve?" Ultron grabbed onto one of the dead robots by its head. "With these? These puppets. There's only one path to peace. The Avengers' extinction."

When Thor suddenly whipped Mjolnir at Ultron, nearly completely destroying him, Mazzy jumped, grabbing onto her dad's arm. 

"I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me," Ultron sang quietly as the robot died off. 

Mazzy hated just looking at it. She turned to her dad again, tapping his arm repetitively before signing, What's he saying? What's he saying?

Tony only shook his head, wrapping an arm around Mazzy's shoulder. 

•

Mazzy only got one of her two hearing aids back after Ultron's attack. Her left one was fine, but the right was crushed and useless. One was better than neither, though. At least Mazzy could hear a little bit. Obviously, nothing was as crisp and loud as it was with both, but she could understand what people were saying for the most part. 

Now, she sat in a big desk chair with a popsicle in her mouth, which she got for being brave. It wasn't anyone's idea but her own, though. She had gone up to her dad and begged for one, and he rolled his eyes and gave in, even though he was sure she had probably had all sorts of sweets during the party. She deserved it, though, he figured. She listened to him, for the most part. 

"All our work is gone," Bruce said defeatedly as he and Tony stared at what was left of the suit Ultron had been living through. Maybe it was for the better that their work was gone, though. Maybe they didn't really need that type of artificial intelligence. "Ultron cleared out. He used the Internet as an escape hatch."

"Ultron," Steve murmured under his breath. 

"He's been in everything. Files, surveillance," Natasha listed. She turned to look at Tony. Mazzy knew the action was meaningful and full of secrets, but she pretended she didn't know anything and Natasha continued on talking. "Probably knows more about us than we know about each other."

"Or ourselves," Mazzy said, glancing up from the floor to lock eyes with Natasha. 

For a moment, the room was silent. Mazzy knew that they all knew something about her that she didn't. And she was acknowledging it. Guilting them. 

Rhodey cleared his throat. "He's in the files, he's in the internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?" he suggested. 

"Nuclear codes," Maria said from where she sat in the corner, picking glass out of her foot. 

"Nuclear codes," Rhodey confirmed as he paced across the room. "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" Natasha asked, her eyebrows furrowed. "He said he wanted us dead."

"He didn't say dead. He said extinct," Steve interjected. 

"He also said he killed someone," Clint added. 

"He said we're all killers, too," Mazzy reminded them all. 

"He meant us," Steve told her, gesturing to himself and the other adults in the room. 

Mazzy narrowed her eyes at him, but only slightly. "I wasn't suggesting otherwise," she told him. 

"Okay, that's not the point. The point is that Ultron is dangerous," Rhodey interrupted before anything could go any further. 

Mazzy shrunk down in her seat. She had gone too far. She didn't want them to know that she had figured anything out. She was being too lenient with herself. 

"He also said he killed somebody," Clint pointed out. 

"There wasn't anyone else in the building," Maria said. 

"Yes, there was," Tony muttered, speaking for the first time since they had entered the lab. They all watched him walk to the center of the room with that phone-like device he was using earlier to try and shut down the Iron Legionnaire before they could go too far. He pressed something on it and a hologram appeared in the center of the room. 

It was orange; used to be sphere-like. Now, though, it was tattered and torn apart. Bits and pieces of what Mazzy knew was the holographic form of Jarvis, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since all this with Ultron had begun. And now it all made sense. Jarvis hadn't said anything because Jarvis was dead. 

Bruce's eyes widened as he approached what used to be Jarvis. "This is insane."

"Jarvis was the first line of defense," Steve said. He had his arms crossed and was staring at his shoes. "He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense."

"No. Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis," Bruce said, shaking his head. He stared into Jarvis's remains. "This isn't strategy. This is... rage."

Mazzy had a strange feeling in her chest. It didn't truly matter that Jarvis was artificial intelligence. No matter if he was human or not, he had been there for as long as Mazzy could remember. Sometimes he was annoying and nosy, and sometimes he was like her built-in best friend. She couldn't imagine how different it would be without him. 

"Can we fix him, Daddy?" Mazzy asked, running her teeth over her bottom lip.

"I don't know, Mazzy," Tony replied quietly. He moved to stand beside the chair she was lounging in and placed his hand on her head, running it through her hair. 

It didn't last long, though, because before they knew it, Thor was marching into the room and grabbing Tony by the neck for seemingly no reason.

"Woah, woah, woah!"

"Come on. Use your words, buddy," Tony grunted, his voice strained by the grip Thor had around his throat. 

"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark," Thor replied vaguely. 

Mazzy jumped up out of her seat, tugging uselessly at Thor's cape. "Let go of him, Goldie Locks!"

Thor let Tony drop back to the ground. 

"Jerk," Mazzy grumbled, now kicking at the back of the cape. She took her popsicle stick, which was now all out of popsicle, out of her mouth and tossed it at his back. He couldn't even feel it hit him, unfortunately. 

"Thor. The Legionnaire," Steve reminded him. That was what Thor was supposed to be doing. Following the trail of the Legionnaire, wherever Ultron was leading it. They needed to know where they were so they could stop them before they hurt too many people. 

"Trail went cold about 100 miles out, but it's headed north. And it has the scepter," Thor reported. "Now we have to retrieve it. Again."

Thor was one to talk about causing problems. Everything seemed to come back to that stupid scepter that had appeared when he and Loki showed up on Earth. If anyone was a problem, it was him. Not Tony. At least, that's what biased little Mazzy Stark had to say about it. 

"Genie's out of that bottle. Clear and present is Ultron," Natasha said. 

Across the room, Dr. Cho was looking over the robot Ultron was using as his body. "I don't understand," she murmured. She turned to look at Tony, who was already exhausted from being blamed for all of this. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"

From where he stood across the room, Tony let out a laugh. 

"Oh, brother," Mazzy murmured under breath, pressing her hands against her forehead. She was back in her chair again, only spectating. 

"You think this is funny?" Thor asked Tony, obviously very irritated. 

"No," Tony said, turning to face the group. He had a funny look on his face, though. "It's probably not, right?" he asked, cocking his head to the side. "Is it very terrible? Is it so... is it so-" he let out another laugh, "it is. It's so terrible." 

"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand," Thor said, stepping closer to Tony.

"No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Tony murmured. He stepped closer to Thor, too, which Mazzy thought was a terrible idea considering that Thor had picked him up by the neck just a moment ago. "It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

Tony's voice was getting that serious tone that people get when they argue about stuff like politics and philosophy, and whether the chicken or the egg came first. Mazzy hated it when her dad got that voice.

"Tony, maybe this might not be the time," Bruce murmured nervously in a sing-song voice.

"Really? That's it?" Tony scoffed, turning to him. "You just roll over, show your belly every time somebody snarls?"

"Only when I've created a murder bot," Bruce said, his eyes wide as he tilted his head to the side. 

"We didn't," Tony argued. He held his arms out to his sides like someone pleading not guilty. "We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"

"Well, you did something right," Steve interjected. Tony rolled his eyes dramatically, and Mazzy did, too, just because. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than Shield."

"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?" Tony asked, raising his eyebrows. 

"No, it's never come up," Rhodey said sarcastically, shaking his head. 

"Saved New York?"

"I remember," Mazzy said, nodding her head. She wasn't sure why he was asking, though. It didn't seem to have anything to do with the conversation at hand. 

"She remembers," Tony said, pointing at Mazzy. "Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing 300 feet below it. Yeah? You all- terrible babysitters, by the way- had my seven-year-old fighting an alien."

"We did tell her to stay in the ship," Clint reminded him. 

"It was too dark in there," Mazzy countered.

"Point is," Tony interrupted, "we're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live-long day, but that up there, that's.... That's the endgame. How are you guys planning on beating that?"

"Together," Steve replied firmly. 

"We'll lose."

"Then we'll do that together, too."