Age of Charon

Hovering over the city of Kathmandu, Ultron had never felt this perplexed even when he had just awakened and been made anew in this strange new world. The whole city seemed to exist for the sole purpose of vexing him. Two dozen of his Sentries accompanied him, flying in a grid pattern, scanning and searching and finding nothing. He would search for names, for people he knew lived here and were part of the Order of Mystic Arts and yet, according to his scans, these people didn’t exist. No Karl Mordo, no Wong, no Hamir, no nothing. In his paranoia, he had searched Tibet, just in case this world was more loyal to the comics’ depiction than that of the cinematic universe. He had started to consider the possibility that perhaps he had been ‘born’ into one of the alternate universes amongst those 14 million and six hundred and five where Agamotto switched planets or died of choking and thus Earth’s foremost Mystic Order simply did not exist.

Thinking of the time, he decided to run one final experiment before leaving Nepal for good. He flew down into the city and landed amidst a somewhat crowded bazaar. The robotic appearance of his temporary body quickly sent the surrounding humans into a frenzy as they panicked and ran away from the ‘monster’ in their midst. This very reaction was the reason why Ultron had had to expropriate Stark and Mr. Beck of their technology in the first place. Humans were visual creatures, after all.

Ignoring them, for they meant no actual harm and could not harm him even if they had possession of firearms or cold weapons, Ultron started his walk into the alley-streets of Kathmandu. He believed that there was a high likelihood that an Order member would approach him at some point. Perhaps, it would be more likely if he actually attacked the residents of this city, but by now his J. S. Ultron persona had tied himself to the image of red-eyed flying robots. The only crime his Sentries had publically committed was theft and the so-called terrorism that the US government had been adamant to lay at his feet, while the press had very kindly called BS, preferring to butcher the Avengers’ reputation instead. After all, the entire world saw Hulk rage live in Johannesburg. No flying robots anywhere in sight. While the entire affair had been a horrid miscalculation, opportunity rose from misfortune and Ultron would not slap the kind hand the press had thrown his way. He had spent a good deal fanning the flames in the background, calling everything the Avengers and SHIELD had ever done into question. President Ellis had only just managed to put the worst of the HYDRA coverage away, and now the sequel of that career-destroying scandal was playing out in an election year.

Anyhow, he returned his attention to the city. But first: Avengers’ ETA: 30 minutes. He would have to finish this quickly. Ms. Potts was still unconscious, although her state of health was recovering at an astonishing pace. He had wished to be present for when she awoke, so after receiving the fourth unsatisfactory report in so many days regarding the location of Kamar-Taj, he had merely split his attention and transferred it over to one of his Sentries who were already on-site. While they made a perfectly fine host body, none of them had been equipped with B.A.R.F. holotech, nor did they have the build for a sustained fight with a superhuman threat like his Legionnaires. He would have to return to base very soon. Ultron had explored the place for over an hour in total, and yet, not one Sling Ring portal or mysteriously-robed individual anywhere in sight within that time despite the ‘very-threatening’ robotic appearance. Could he presume that the Order did not discriminate in favor of carbon-based lifeforms, and thus they were leaving an essentially harmless exotic tourist to explore their city in peace? If he could, Ultron would have laughed at the thought alone. Humans? Unprejudiced of the unknown? As if. Case in point, he made the acquaintance of the very armed, very terrified

, local police force, from whom he ran away unwilling to engage.

As a result, he would have deemed the entire experiment a failure if it were not for the building he stood in front of. It was an unremarkable building, two-story high, the paint-job certainly needed to be redone two decades ago, the laundry drying in the single balcony facing east, while weeds and other greenery repossessed the sidewalk in front of it.

It was so unremarkable amidst the two dozen others just like it that he had seen that day that were it not for his actual photographic database of a memory, he wouldn’t have recognized it. This was not building #25 in his journey of unremarkable buildings. Nor was it numbers 2 through 24. This was building #1. The one that if he took the alley on the left would soon lead him to the bazaar he started at.

If he were an aimless tourist, he would have ignored it despite the recognition. But he was not a tourist, and he certainly wasn’t aimless. Ultron had started his on-foot search for Order members very methodically, drawing a map in his code all the while and matching everything he saw with a map of Kathmandu. He was physically incapable of becoming lost. After an hour, traversing the spidery alleys and nooks of the west side of the city, he shouldn’t be anywhere near this building. In fact, he should be diametrically opposed to by at least 2.35 kilometers. Yet here he was. Where he started.

Ultron took flight, wanting to view the area as a whole once more. Crosschecking with both his mental map and that of the city, Ultron had to surrender and admit that he had gotten lost. At the realization, he let out a metallic grin, hoping that whoever controlled this area’s barrier, spell or enchantment could see the victory and determination that he placed there.

They hid. But he found them. Kamar-Taj existed and was here, somewhere within this circle area, centered 1.175 km east of his starting location.

Now, he had two options: he either found a way to outwit the magic surrounding this region, or he forced them out of their hiding hole.

Regarding the first option… The MCU hadn’t shown any magic similar to what he had experienced. But he had expected that. This was a real, living universe, where Sorcerers had as their foundation thousands of years of discovery, experimentation and magical research, not a two-hour-long movie with a focus on narrative and character growth. However, he could still make some inferences from what he knew. The Mind Stone inhabited his mental landscape regardless of his actual physical location. He was certain that Mind Magic capable of utterly subverting that of the Mind Stone either did not exist or was so powerful that only a being greater than the Celestials could wield it. The likelihood that a primordial being of untold power had bought a house in Kathmandu’s west-side was so infinitely small that it was laughable. Therefore, this magic had to be an illusion, a time or dimensional loop, a spell that could affect the soul or displace the body quietly. It could also be something else entirely. But not Mind Magic.

Given his unfamiliarity with magic —and the fact that he could think of it as actual, applicable energy rather than a figment of imagination was a cause for both hilarity and madness— there was less than a 2% chance that he could outsmart the magic or its Sorcerers within the time he had left before the climax of his plan. That chance would become nearly non-existent if the magic had him as its intended target or was screening for individuals whose intent lay in making use of the Time Stone.

As such, his second option was his only actual option.

He did not have much time left. His Legionnaires had begun to send reports warning him of Ms. Potts’ much improved condition and imminent awakening. He would have to come another day, preferably in one of his B.A.R.F-equipped Legionnaires, pretending to be human so that any violent interactions he could start would be seen as separate from his activist persona. He would have to devise a more detailed approach to leading the Order out of their—.

A loud explosion reverberated across the land. 0.45 km north of his location, a gas station had imploded. He could sense the dying echoes of one of his Sentries in there. Someone had thrown his Sentry from the sky, crash-landing its broken body made of now-exposed electric wires into a building that stored gas and oil.

Only his programming stopped Ultron from gasping. Had Captain America lost all his ma—?

A shield punched into his midsection, cutting his body in two immediately.

Ultron opened his single eye in the nearest working Sentry, wishing to curse.