Chapter Text
Battle of Sokovia, April 2015 AD, 14 AFE (After Formation of the Empire)
……………………………………………Pietro Maximoff…………………………………………………
Pietro was getting tired. The hydra scientists had never wanted to let him out of sight for long, so he had never had a chance to run all out for long periods after getting his powers. He was a bit surprised that his endurance had held out for this long, but now he had been running through Ultron drones and carrying civilians across the city for the better part of a day. It didn’t help that said city was now floating at least six kilometers up in the sky.
He was constantly having to stop, take a breather between fights. Even so, as he swept through his wrecked and flying home city looking for more drones to destroy or people to save, Quicksilver felt himself getting slower and slower. So when he rounded a corner and saw Hawkeye and some kid about to be gunned down, he couldn’t be certain that he would survive helping them, or even be able to reach them in time.
Later he would always insist he had used his powers of super speed to carefully consider his options in mere fractions a second, deciding that the most moral choice would of course be to risk his own life for Barton and the child. In reality, Pietro Quicksilver Maximoff had never been one to carefully consider anything; he just went for it. Just as Quicksilver reached the crouching Clint, he saw out of the corner of his eye a swirling ring of white patterns … wolves maybe?
Someone… a woman?... screamed “NOOO!”, and an unseen Force pushed Pietro, Clint, and the child out of the way of the bullets.
“Did you see that?” Pietro panted as he stood up.
“See what?” Clint looked up, shaken. “Er… I mean… thanks, that was pretty impressive man.”
“No, I meant the… uh…’pant’… never-mind. I don’t suppose you have any coffee? Or maybe one of those American energy drinks that give you a heart attack?”
“Actually, I have got a chocolate bar,” Clint said, proffering the aforementioned article.
“Seriously?”
“Yah, never go into battle without one. Take it.”
“Thanks!” Quicksilver zoomed off, inhaling the snack as he went.
“No problem…” Hawkeye turned to the child, “Ok, let’s get you on one of those ships.”
New York, Five months later
Several members of the Avengers were back in New York during an unseasonably hot week in September to help with yet another complication in that had come up in moving their main headquarters upstate. In spite of the heat, Pietro had slipped out for an afternoon jog to get away from the bedlam currently consuming the interior of Avengers Tower. Jogging of course was a relative term for him; he was moving faster than any of the traffic that he dodged past. He had been training for endurance since the Battle of Sokovia; even if the strange incident had been an aspect of his powers that would help in any dire situation, Pietro naturally wasn’t too eager to test that theory.
As he jogged down 3rd Avenue, Pietro heard a commotion over the sound of Time in a Bottle playing on his headphones. What the heck is that? Sounds like huge block of metal scraping the cement. That probably means a car is crashing, which means someone is in trouble. Well, this sounds like a job for Quicksilver, Superhero Extraordinaire! All these thoughts took less than half a second, and he ran up a block to see what was going on, only to stop dead in his tracks as some kid in a red hoody caught a runaway car with his bare hands.
………………………………………………Peter Parker……………………………………………………
Peter was having one of the best weeks of his life, certainly the best since Uncle Ben had died. (No Peter, think of the positives); First positive: he had finally figured out a way to use his powers for good and to make money – a lucky dumpster dive had netted him an easily repairable high quality video camera, and his first video of Spider-Man webbing up some bank robbers had rapidly gained thousands of views (people really liked seeing a super hero help out with normal problems).
Second: Midtown School of Science and Technology (the totally awesome high school he had been lucky enough to go to) had an incredible chemistry lab, meaning that getting the necessary chemicals for web fluid was going to be a lot easier than he had thought, he already had some ideas for improvements to the formula that he could make with a greater variety of ingredients.
Third: His best friend Ned had gotten the new Lego UCS Starship Enterprise-D for his birthday, and he was going to get to help put it together. That was definitely the most important positive.
Fourth: He had just managed to catch a runaway car! Not that runaway cars were a positive, but it was good that he had managed to catch it! (and on video too).
“Holly crap man! That was Epic!” some guy with silver-blond hair (who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, Peter really needed to get better at paying attention to his new extra sense) shouted excitedly from right next to him.
Ok Parker, time for that ‘definitely not a teenager/talking to the public’ voice you’ve been practicing “Uhh… THank you citizen, just doing my… duty” Peter winced at the tone which had sounded deep and cool in front of his mirror, but was just a bit silly in public.
“What part of America is that accent from?” The stranger replied in an odd accent of his own.
“Is it really that bad?” Peter replied in his normal tone of voice (sheepish, that is).
“No no, sorry, I’ve only lived here a couple of months, I just assumed you were from like, Texas or something” They guy sounded a bit sheepish himself, but otherwise kept what was apparently his normal accent, “Whatever, you have got to come with me!”
“Woah woah woah, come with you whereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…” Peters words trailed off into a scream as the stranger picked him up and shot off toward downtown Manhattan at something like the speed of sound. The logical part of his mind chimed in to tell him that they couldn’t be going quite that fast because no windows were breaking from a sonic boom, but that thought quickly passed as his brain started spinning even faster than the stranger was running. Something along the lines of: Oh my god ohmygod this can’t be happening I’mbeingkidnapped am I being kidnapped? We’re heading towards Avengers Tower ohmygodomygod Avengers Tower that means this is that new Avenger Quicksilver, well duh how did I not realize that sooner OH MY GOD AM I BEING RECRUTED TO THE AVENGERS!?!?!
“Uh Quicksilver, you are Quicksilver right? Are you sure about this?” Parker managed to get out as they reached the foot of Avengers Tower.
“You can react at this speed?” Quicksilver sounded almost as amazed and exited as Peter felt, “That’s awesome! Now hang on I haven’t tried this while carrying someone before!” And before Peter could get out more than “WAIT” he ran straight up the side of the tower.
………………………………………Steve Rogers……………………………………………….
There had been such high hopes for the new upstate headquarters when they had started moving in after the battle of Sokovia. A bigger facility, more buildings, most of them purpose built, less of other people’s stuff to get damaged when things went wrong, and overall, just more room to run around. Now between the delicate scientific equipment, the fact that two of their teammates weren’t available to so much as give their preference on how to handle their stuff, the security concerns involved with shipping literal tons of high technology and top-secret documents, and of course the political mess (it seemed the mayor of New York didn’t want his resident superheroes leaving); it was beginning to look like the move wouldn’t be complete for another year.
Steve was standing amid a swarm of cardboard boxes and stacks of junk in what had once been their common area, wondering where Maximoff had gotten off to (Tony had been less than helpful in finding him, “I didn’t put a radio collar on the guy, what do you want from me?”) when the man in question rocketed in from the balcony carrying a screaming person in red and blue… pajamas? (Steve still found modern fashions somewhat hard to parse at times). This person proceeded to leap to the ceiling and stay there, shouting “Not cool dude” while trying to hit Maximoff with jets of sticky stringy stuff that sprayed from his hands. The kid (he sounded young and wasn’t particularly tall) then seemed to realize where he was, apologized profusely wile babbling about how he had designed the webs to dissolve in a few hours so they wouldn’t leave a mess, and tried to escape out the window only to be caught by Vision floating down from the upper floors to see what all the ruckus was about. Vison being Vision, he efficiently pulled off the kid’s hood, presumably thinking him to be some sort of intruder.
“Behold the newest member of the Avengers!” Maximoff proclaimed proudly, prompting Vision to set the kid back on the floor and say “My apologies”.
“Pietro that’s a child.” Rodey noted in the tone of a harried mother.
“So-what if he’s a bit young; you said you made this, kid?” Tony was experimentally stretching a piece of webbing between his hands.
“You cannot seriously be considering letting a kid onto the team just because he can make webs.”
“Yah, Sure I can Cap, people have been trying to make artificial spider silk for decades! So how did you do it Spiderling?”
“Uh… Hi I’m PeterMan, S S SpiderParker uhh sorry my name’s Peter Parker but I’ve been going by Spider-M an, you know like how you call yourself Iron Man, I thought it would be cool to have a made-up name.” Parker’s voice trailed off into a nervous whisper before bouncing back with “right you want to know about the webbing, well it’s pretty simple really I just mixed (a long list of chemicals that Steve didn’t understand the names of, apparently available from stores he was pretty sure hadn’t existed is his time) and that’s it really.”
“Well, it’s no arc reactor in a cave but that’s pretty impressive SpiderParker” Tony was now examining Parker’s discarded hood, “so is the ceiling-sticking from the web or some sort of suction cu- Woah how do you see out of these?”
“Well see I got bitten by this weird spider at this year’s Stark Expo, uh not that I’m blaming you or anything Mr. Stark, but like ever since I’ve been able to stick to stuff an I’m suddenly really strong and I can see really well, like a little too well the goggles help with that.”
“See Cap, he’s got superpowers and genius inventions! It’s like we’ve had a secret child this whole time!” Tony then turned to Parker and said with a level of seriousness that he had been showing more and more lately no matter how he tried to hide it, “Do not turn out like me kid. Or too much not like me... Theres a grey area in the middle there that I probably should have been shooting for all along.”
“On that note Tony, don’t you think we should maybe not recruit a child?” Steve looked around the room “I’m not alone in thinking this right?”
“If I may,” Vision intoned, “If this Peter Parker wishes to use his abilities for good, he should be allowed to do so.”
Maximoff chimed in “Exactly, he is already out there doing good, I found him catching a runaway car.”
“No, nope, it’s way too dangerous,” Rodey protested, “we cannot just let a teenager go around fighting criminals and unknown enhanced persons!”
“See, Rodey agrees with me-”
“What, no-”
“-We can’t just let Pete go fight crime” Tony interrupted his friend’s interruption, “we have to help him; you know training, supervision, upgrades for his gear, what do you say Crime-Fighting-Spider?”
“I would love the opportunity Mr. Stark.”
“Alright,” Steve sighed “You can join.” Over the sound of exited whooping he added, “training only for now, we’ll see if you’re ready for real missions when they come up.”
And with that, the Avengers gained its newest member.
Avengers Upstate Compound, Fall 2015 AD, late 14 AFE
The following months of Steve’s life after Spider-Man joined the team were consumed by a renewed effort to train the new Avengers, which he had chosen to prioritize over completing the big move. Kids! The lot of them! Despite being older than Parker by nearly a decade, Mr. Maximoff usually showed barely more maturity, and even Wanda had her moments. Meanwhile Vison, though quite mature on the surface occasionally reminded everyone that any information or experience he hadn’t managed to inherit in the messy process of being mashed together from Jarvis and Ultron he had had less than a year to learn. Rodey and Sam on the other hand really made Steve feel like an old man with their experiences in a military that was hauntingly familiar yet shockingly different from the one he remembered.
Parker had insisted that they not tell his aunt that he was Spider-Man, and though that didn’t sit well with Steve or Natasha (who had been truly furious at the idea of recruiting a teenager when she first found out), they had eventually been convinced, and Tony helpfully made up something about a Stark internship as a cover story. The fact that he was still in school had played havoc with Steve’s original training schedule, and ended up leaving him with no excuse not to spend at least part of the days dealing with the big move (on the positive side, it gave him time to continue the search for Bucky). Parker had also in spite of instructions kept patrolling the city as Spider-Man, but had given such an impassioned speech about standing up for the little guy (reminding Steve a lot of his own younger self) that he had agreed to allow it as long as Parker promised to call for backup if he ran into anything more dangerous than a garden variety mugger. The habit had led to his Spider-Man identity being discovered by his friend Ned, after which Steve sent him to Natasha for extra training on operational security. If he’s going to keep a secret, he should do it well.
It was in late November, the weekend after Thanksgiving actually, when Steve was relaxing in the new common room at the upstate facility, that Vision gave him the report that would change everything. “Sir, I have detected something disturbing on the internet.”
Steve briefly reflected that most of his teammates would have made a joke of that statement before replying, “what is it, Vision?”
“It was a presence that resembled, though I hasten to add did not fully constitute, Ultron.”
“Ultron!?” Steve exclaimed, “are you sure?”
“As I said,” Vision explained remaining calm, “It did not appear to him in his entirety. I have traced the signal to an unregistered facility in northern Canada that has features reminiscent of a secret Hydra base. It would fit that organization’s behavioral pattern to be experimenting with any remnants of Ultron that they can acquire.”
“Right. Let’s round up the team, meet back here in half an hour to-”
“I am sorry Captain, but I must go to Oslo.”
“What? Why?”
“The Nexus Internet Hub will be an ideal location from which to defend the network from a possible escape by Ultron.”
“I thought you needed to be on-site with Ultron to shut him out?”
“That was when he was already present throughout the network, this time I will be playing defense.”
“Well how fast can you get to Norway?”
Vison took a brief moment to calculate, “4 hours, 46 minutes, and 41 seconds, that is under the assumption that I avoid taking a sonic shockwave over populated areas.”
“All right, we’ll hit the facility at 17:00 hours.”
“I will be ready Captain.” Vision flew off without wasting another moment.
Steve Found Natasha already in the briefing room. “You know Nat, it’s a little disturbing that you eavesdrop on everything going on in this base.”
She looked up from her monitor with a smirk, “Yeah, but it’s useful. I’ve already notified the twins, and I’m ringing Tony now.”
“And speak of the devil, which is me by the way. Sup Nat, Cap, you miss me already?”
Steve suddenly found a bit of trepidation at giving his friend the news. “Listen Tony, I know you’re trying to retire and all, but…”
“What, you can’t run the team without me?” Tony interjected with a mock serios expression.
“We believe someone is trying to awaken Ultron.”
“SHIT! Where?”
“Looks like a possible Hydra base in northern Canada, we’re going to hit it as soon as Vision is in Norway to defend the internet.”
“Send me the coordinates, I’ll pick up Peter and meet you there.” Tony hung up.
“He can’t seriously be thinking of taking a teenager into a Hydra Base!” Natasha objected.
“Tony’s right Natasha, Sam and Rodes are out of state with their families, and we need all available hands on-deck. We can go in teams of 2, one veteran and one rookie on each. Besides, the kid’s got heart, he’s been impressing me.”
“You know he nearly let his secret slip in front of his principal, got detention from the incident because it sounded like he was saying he was too important for high school, and he thinks one of the girls in his decathlon team suspects him?”
“Oh God, did he have to watch one of those awful films the Department of Education made me do?” He started walking toward the hanger.
“Yes, he did, and don’t change the subject. Why did you agree to those videos anyway?” She quickly got up and followed him.
“I lost a bet with Clint. And it’s not like Spider-Man hasn’t been shot at before, he took down that gang of armed bank robbers solo last week. One of them had a laser rifle, any luck tracking down were that came from?”
“No, and he was supposed to wait for backup.”
“We’ll be right there with him this time.”
…………………………………………Wanda Maximoff………………………………………
The last time Wanda had gone into battle with the Avengers, she had been untrained, unready, and frankly not in a great state of mind what with questioning all her beliefs from over the past decade. This time she was …excited, yes, excited to be going into a fight prepared, on what she was fairly certain was the side of good, and ready to be truly helpful. Only thing she was missing was a ‘made-up-name’ as Peter would say. Unlike her idiot brother, who had pretty much immediately stated calling himself Quicksilver upon receiving his powers, she was for now stuck with the simple callsign ‘Red’, which could frankly have fit over half the members of the team.
They dropped out of the Quinet just inside the outer defense, a simple perimeter fence to discourage unwary trespassers, and what on satellite looked like a steep hillside. It turned out to be a prepared wall which ringed the base of the once natural hill on which the facility was located. Wanda quickly threw a tree through the nearest firing port to buy them some breathing room.
“Stark, they know we’re here,” Captain America called over the comm to Iron Man, who was still a couple minuets out.
“Yep. Sorry about the bad intel, when Edith’s up and running I swear she will be able to tell the difference between a wall and a cliff.”
The ground team quickly scaled (or in her case flew over) the wall, whereupon The Captain ordered her and Natasha to go right while he and her brother flanked left. As they ran, she took out guard posts one by one, throwing their occupants against the walls of their bunkers. They had reached the inner ring of defenses when Iron Man rocketed in with Spider-Man swinging past a moment later. She heard him muttering “keep your distance, web um up, keep your distance, web um up,” over the comms. Then Hydra finally got their act together and sent out a counterattack with a tank and a few squads of goons. She flipped the tank wile Spiderman webbed up the goons and Pietro disarmed them; it was over in seconds.
“Is that the best you got?” Peter taunted.
“Uh, guys, I got something big on my scanner,” Iron man reported from above, seconds before a giant metal hand burst from the ground. The thing pulled itself up through the earth as they all stood in awe of the skyscraper sized colossus before them.
“Vision is that…” Stark began,
“No, it is not Ultron himself,” Vision called in from Norway, “it appears to be a construct using a bare minimum of his programing. I must remain on guard for something bigger.”
“This looks plenty big to me,” Natasha muttered.
“Right, Stark, Spider-Man, and Red, you find a way to take down this thing,” Captain America directed as he dogged a beam of fire from its mouth, “Quicksilver, Widow and I will keep the remaining guards off your back.”
“On it!”
“On it.”
“Okay!”
“Guys I think this thing’s named Ultimo,” Spider-Man called out from the monstrosities back, where he was trying to pry off some armor plating.
“What makes you say that?” Iron Man was doing his best to blast a hole into the head, but kept having to doge return lasers.
“It’s written on the back of his head.” Spider-Man was now attempting to distract Ultimo by crawling over its eyes.
“Dang it Maximoff, keep that thing still!” Stark shouted as Ultimo moved again before he could melt through its armor.
“I’m trying,” she snapped, “it’s too strong and large, has too much (what’s the English word? Momentum) momentum! Also, I think it has vibranium in its armor!”
“That’s it!” Peter sounded exited, “we can use its own mass against it, trip him!” He proceeded to swing down around Ultimo’s legs, wrapping them with webbing. As the giant staggered, Wanda refocused her powers on the tank and thew it in Ultimo’s face. The monstrosity came crashing down with an enormous thud, flattening one of the facilities buildings. She then used her telekinesis to hold the giant machine to the ground while Iron Man opened up on it with his chest beam.
“Alright, big guy’s dead,” Stark announced.
“The Hydra men who saw that are surrendering,” Captain America called back, “My group will sweep the buildings, you guys check down that hole Ultimo came out of.”
The hole consisted of a several story drop through the earth into a cavernous artificial space, the metal roof of which had been torn through by Ultimo’s ascent. The pillars holding it up looked strangely ornate, not like utilitarian constructs for a secret bunker, and the floor was made of flagstones rather than concrete. The rest of the room reminded her of the one in Sokovia however, all around the area were scattered machine tools, piles of Ultron drone scraps, and an assembly rig the right size to have built Ultimo. Tony and Peter immediately ran up to a computer station and started hacking in, Wanda decided the best thing for her to do was guard the entrance.
A few minutes later Wanda heard some exited chattering from the computers, and Peter grappled himself up to the ceiling. “Mr. Stark! I see it! They really do have a freaking stargate in here!” Well, that sounded interesting. Wanda flew herself down to the other end of the room where he was pointing. There was a sort of circular, device? It looked like it was made more of stone than anything technological. There were however bundles of cables from various computer terminals attaching to something on the object.
Tony flew over, “I am astounded. Truly, I’m speechless. Words escape me. No possible verbiage could ever capture the magnitude of this moment.”
“Indeed. For it will soon see the end of the Avengers, and the return of Hy-BEW-urk” the hydra scientist cut off as Stark hit him with a blast from his repulser-ray. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite dead. “Heil Hydra” he choked out, pressing a button on the terminal he had been hiding behind.
The gateway lit up with a mesh of yellow lines over a spacelike void. The lines began to flicker like old TV static as everyone and everything in the room felt an incredible force pulling them toward the gate. Wanda was able to hold herself in place with her powers just long enough to see the other half of the team coming down the staircase only to be pulled inexorably toward the gateway before she too was sucked through. She awoke in darkness.