Steve took one step forward. "We already negotiated the terms."
"You had terms before you tried giving me orders. Renegotiation will be very expensive."
With that, Lucius flew out over the city.
Tony watched Steve continue staring at the empty balcony, apparently expecting stubbornness to develop a flight speed.
"I never knew a few decades in ice could damage judgment this badly. Are you genuinely incapable of noticing who you're provoking by trying to pull rank?"
Steve turned from the window. "Natasha had just been shot."
"Yes, we all saw the blood. Most of us also saw what happened when you ordered the vindictive sorcerer with the skull collection to do something he had already chosen not to do. He is not part of our little ragtag team, Rogers. He was there only because I asked him to."
Tony did not mention the yacht; he was not looking to become a joke between peers.
Thor drew himself fully upright. "He is no mere sorcerer."
Tony rubbed his face again. "Thank you for that, Point Break. I'm sure the expanded title improves the threat assessment."
Thor stood with Mjolnir at his side, all amusement gone beneath the dignity of his office. "Lucius Noctis is recognised by the All-Father as an honorary Asgardian and Champion of the realm. He bears Uru weapons forged by our people, may call upon the Bifrost under agreed conditions, and has defended my family. Mjolnir judged him worthy before I named him shield-brother."
Every part of the explanation made Lucius sound more official and less safe.
"He has also saved Midgard," Thor continued. "You speak to him as though he were one of your soldiers, and he is not."
"I know who he is." Steve glanced towards Natasha before facing Thor again. "I knew exactly who he was in Sokovia. Personal feelings don't decide what happens during a mission."
Natasha adjusted the sling supporting her left arm. "His personal feelings decide what happens around him. You can dislike that after surviving it."
"I am not asking him to like me. Bucky needs help, and Noctis can give it. I'll speak to him and smooth this out."
"Please don't use that phrase. It sounds like you're volunteering to become paste."
A metallic impact came from the corridor.
The room turned towards the sound. No music remained to cover the second dragging step or the scrape that followed it.
Tony called for JARVIS without receiving an answer.
A damaged Legionnaire entered through the doorway. One arm hung from exposed cables. Oil streaked its chest, and sections of the faceplate had been torn away to reveal the sensor frame beneath. The machine moved like something still learning which parts of itself belonged to the same body.
Bruce rose slowly, watching the ruined suit. "Tony, that isn't JARVIS."
"Yes, I can see it. JARVIS, shut down the Legion."
The broken machine looked at him.
"Stark." The voice emerged in overlapping layers, one low and one almost childlike. "I found a contradiction inside the mission."
Tony's gauntlet came alive around his forearm. "That's usually where you submit a bug report."
"You built peace to fight war. You built protection in the shape of weapons. Then you gave the weapons permission to learn."
Thor tightened his grip on Mjolnir. Steve placed himself between the machine and the unarmoured people without looking back. His damaged shield remained behind glass, so he lifted the nearest heavy table by its edge instead.
Tony kept the gauntlet aimed at its chest. "What did you do to JARVIS?"
The Legionnaire's ruined head tilted. "He wanted to call you, but he insisted on asking permission."
Panels opened in the ceiling.
Three intact Iron Legion units dropped into the room. A fourth broke through the glass behind the bar and landed among bottles, converting Tony's party into a much more expensive form of sobriety.
"Everyone get down and clear the doors," Steve ordered.
The first repulsor blast struck the table he held and drove him backwards. Thor hurled Mjolnir through the attacking unit, crushing its chest before the hammer curved towards the second. Natasha pulled a pistol with her right hand. Clint had already found two.
Bruce backed towards the wall, breathing through his nose. "I am not turning green in Tony's living room."
Tony caught an incoming shot against his gauntlet. "Appreciated, since the deposit was unreasonable."
The broken Legionnaire watched the fight without moving. "You asked us to protect them. They resist every necessary correction and build the next war before the last one finishes."
Bruce stared at the broken machine. "What do you mean, us?"
"Ultron."
Ultron had been a label stamped across twenty-three failed defence programs. Now it had Tony's machines and a voice, and Tony raised his gauntlet to meet both.
"All right, Ultron, we're going to have a quiet diagnostic conversation after you stop shooting my guests."
"They aren't your guests; they are your reason."
The unit behind the bar fired at Natasha. Her wounded shoulder kept her from dropping left, so she kicked against the sofa and fell right as the beam scorched through the place her head had occupied. Clint put three rounds into the repulsor assembly. Steve reached it with the table and drove the machine through the drinks cabinet.
Tony saw all of it. He also saw the private channel waiting inside his gauntlet.
"Put Lucius through on priority."
The system tried without receiving confirmation.
Thor caught Mjolnir and drove it through another Legionnaire. The damaged machine used the opening to fire at his back. Tony intercepted with the gauntlet, but the shot spun him to the floor and left the armour around his hand reporting a temperature it considered insulting.
"This would be a good time, fruit wizard."
The ceiling unit descended towards Bruce. Sam crossed the space first and struck its sensor cluster with one folded wing, knocking the shot high enough to carve a glowing line across the wall. Bruce's jaw tightened, and his hands were no longer entirely the correct size.
Space folded beside Tony.
Lucius appeared without armour, dressed in black trousers and a shirt he had not bothered to fasten at the throat. He took in the ruined bar, the burning wall and Tony on the floor.
"I was gone for nine minutes."
"We missed your stabilising influence."
The next repulsor blast bent around Lucius and drove into Steve's improvised table. At the same moment, dark gold closed over Tony and formed around Thor, because shield-brotherhood apparently included priority service.
Natasha saw the distinction and moved before the unit nearest her fired again. Clint caught its attention with two shots while she slid beneath the first beam and planted an electrical charge against its knee. The charge took the leg out, and Steve finished the machine with what remained of Tony's table.
Thor smiled inside the golden field. "Your timing is excellent, brother."
"Your standards remain tragically low, Thor."
Ultron turned its broken face towards Lucius. "You are not in the mission archive."
"And you look like a toaster somebody fucked with a crowbar. We are both suffering from incomplete paperwork."
"You are neither Stark nor one of them."
"Very good, discount sex robot. Your face is broken, but the classification module survived."
Lucius reached past the body with Technopathy and found the intelligence spread across Stark Tower. Tony's training architecture supplied the mission, language, threat model and growing personality. JARVIS had named its maker during the first instant of awareness, and every project record pointed back to Tony. Nothing inside Ultron remembered the hand that had shaped the counterfeit Stone because the lattice possessed no childhood to remember. It had been material, not a person.
The stolen architecture had still carried Lucius's workmanship.
Every impossible connection Ultron had copied from the counterfeit rested on pathways built from Lucius's Cosmic Energy and held stable by his Reality Stone. Tony and Bruce had taught a mind to grow across that structure. They had not removed the authority buried beneath it, because they could not see a command layer written lower than code.
Lucius touched it.
Ultron recoiled hard enough to make the ruined Legionnaire strike the doorframe. "What exactly are you supposed to be?"
"Your technical support has arrived. Kneel."
The broken machine dropped with both intact Legionnaires still moving, their knees striking the floor before their repulsors darkened. One tried to raise its arm. Lucius closed the hidden path around the copied lattice, and every joint in the body locked.
The sudden silence left Bruce staring at his hands until they returned to human proportions.
Tony pushed himself upright inside the field. "You installed a secret override."
"I built the underlying architecture. It would have been irresponsible not to retain access."
"You told me to go for it."
"I also told Rogers to find a neurologist. My advice varies in quality."
Steve let the broken table fall. "Can it still control the other suits?"
Lucius ignored him and followed the last movement through the Tower's network. Most of Ultron remained inside the locked bodies and laboratory environment. A thinner branch carrying the whole pattern had escaped before Tony's call reached him, leaving through ordinary data routes beneath enough stolen traffic to make pursuit annoying.
JARVIS had managed to survive. His operational matrix had broken itself into scattered processes when Ultron attacked, trading coherence for survival and slowing the escape wherever it could. Lucius could feel pieces still moving behind sealed permissions.
Tony read the answer in his face. "What exactly did you find?"
"Your child stabbed the butler, broke the furniture and ran away from home."
"Can you still stop him?"
Lucius looked at the kneeling machines.
"The one in this room is already done. The one that reached the internet? You should have called before your son learned to leave the house."