112 Town Hall

Avengers Tower was the base of operations for the Avengers, but regardless of how homely a place it was, Natasha Romanoff was trained to be aware of her surroundings all the time. That training had become a muscle memory for her. Even now, as Natasha moved through the corridors of Avengers Tower, she walked with light steps and her eyes flickered to every corner and reflective surface. You didn’t live this long in her line of work by assuming everything was fine just because it looked fine. This meant that her mind was also constantly working on worst-case scenarios, and this one practically screamed for her attention.

Bruce and Tony were “analysing” the sceptre. That alone had set off alarms in her head. Not because they weren’t brilliant, but because brilliant minds got reckless. Natasha had noticed the steely determination in Tony’s eyes when they were coming back from Sokovia. He saw something there that shook him. And, while she might not be as intimately acquainted with fear as Bruce was, she still knew fear in men. And fear motivates humans to do unimaginable things. This was bad in general, but especially true when left alone with something they didn’t fully understand.

Harry had confided in her after their trip to Africa that both he and Thor had suspected that the sceptre housed an Infinity Stone.

An Infinity Stone.

Even saying the words in her head made her skin crawl. She’d seen what the Tesseract could do. She remembered the destruction it left in its wake. And the Aether? Jane had almost died. She couldn’t even imagine what would have happened if Malelieth and his ilk had got their hands on that. These weren’t weapons, they were forces of nature disguised as trinkets. They didn’t belong on Earth, let alone in Tony Stark’s hands.

When Natasha rounded a corner, she nearly collided with Maria Hill, Fury’s ever-composed right hand.

“Did we get Strucker?” Natasha asked as she diverted her mind from Tony and Bruce.

Hill nodded briskly. “Yes, Steve captured him in Sokovia. We turned him over to NATO as a peace offering.”

“And the two enhanced?”

“Wanda and Pietro Maximoff,” Hill said, already pulling up the files on her tablet. “Twins. Parents killed when a shell levelled their apartment building. Orphaned at ten. Volunteered for Strucker’s experiments a few years back.”

Natasha scanned the profiles. “Abilities?” she asked.

“He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis. Her thing is neural electric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation.” Hill explained

Natasha rubbed her temple, already anticipating the trouble ahead. These two would be a handful.

“Send their profiles to Harry and Thor,” she said. “Have them start working on engagement strategies. The girl’s abilities might be magical-adjacent. Harry should have insight there. The boy’s speed makes him the wild card. Thor might have faced enemies with super speed. He might know how to best handle him.”

“You think they’re going to resurface soon?” Hill asked.

“No,” Natasha said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to sit around waiting. I want them found. These two are enhanced, trained by Hydra, and emotionally volatile. The longer they’re free, the more unpredictable they get. With their powers, they might free Strucker easily.”

Hill nodded, already tapping notes into her tablet. “I’ll assign recon teams. Quiet ones. Eyes only unless they have a shot. As soon as we know that they are on the field, I will message Harry to take them out.”

“Good. If they’re going to start picking sides in this mess, I’d rather know where they’re standing before they make their first move.”

Hill glanced up. “Understood.”

“While you’re at it,” Natasha added, “help Steve with his speech. He’s passionate, sure but passion doesn’t always come with context. I don’t want a rousing battle cry. We need proof. Let the diplomats see that we’re not just muscle swinging at shadows. The world needs to see why we do what we do.”

Hill gave Natasha a casual two-finger salute. “Got it. Facts over fireworks.”

With that, Hill turned the corner and disappeared into the administrative wing.

Natasha exhaled through her nose and turned her attention forward again.

Time to deal with the bigger fire. She resumed her pace toward the research lab where Tony and Bruce were, no doubt, neck-deep in something brilliant, reckless, or both.

When Natasha stepped into the research lab, her eyes immediately locked onto the two men hunched close together over a holographic display with their voices low and conspiratorial.

They hadn’t noticed her yet. She lingered just long enough to catch the tail end of what sounded a lot like the start of something dangerous.

“This could be it, Bruce,” Tony was saying, his voice low but fervent. “This could be the key to building Ultron.”

Bruce blinked. “I thought Ultron was a fantasy.”

“Yesterday it was,” Tony replied as his eyes fixed on the holographic display. “But if we can crack this and apply it to the Iron Legion protocol…”

“That’s a mad-sized ‘if,’” Bruce said warily.

Tony gave a crooked grin. “Our job is ‘if.’ What if you were on a beach right now, sipping margaritas, turning brown instead of green? What if you didn’t have to live looking over your shoulder for VERONICA?”

Bruce smirked. “Hey, don’t hate, I helped build VERONICA.”

“As a failsafe,” Tony reminded him. “That was worst-case thinking. I’m talking best-case. What if the world was actually safe? What if, next time aliens drop out of the sky, they couldn’t even get past the front door?”

Bruce folded his arms. “Then the only ones left to threaten the world... would be us.”

 “I want to apply this to the Ultron program,” Tony continued, pointing towards holographic projection. “But JARVIS can't parse a data schematic this dense. We can only run the interface while we have the scepter. Three days, max. Just give me three days.”

Bruce hesitated. “So... you’re planning to build an artificial intelligence and not tell the team.”

Before Tony could reply, a voice cut through the lab like a knife.

“Run that by me again,” Natasha said coolly from where she was listening in. “What is it exactly that you want to do... that you don’t want to tell the team about?”

Tony groaned and looked over his shoulder. Bruce startled, nearly knocking over a datapad, while Natasha walked in with the slow, deliberate stride of someone who’d already won the argument, just waiting for the others to realize it.

She didn’t need a weapon. She didn’t need a glare. Her presence alone was enough to drain the smug right out of the room.

“Great,” he added with mock dramatics. “Now even Mother knows.”

Natasha said nothing. She simply leveled a long, pointed stare at Bruce, the kind that made operatives twice her size spill state secrets. Bruce shifted uncomfortably, eyes darting between her and the glowing projection.

Tony, sensing the breach, immediately jumped in. “Okay, let’s not guilt trip the guy he’s just brainstorming, we’re brainstorming—”

But it was already over.

Bruce cleared his throat and mumbled, “Tony wants to use Loki’s scepter to create an artificial intelligence.”

Tony swatted his arm. “Seriously? Betrayed by science bros?”

Natasha narrowed her eyes, turning to Tony like a schoolteacher about to assign detention. “Is that true?”

Tony looked anywhere but at her ceiling, floor, the scepter suddenly very interested in absolutely everything else in the room. Natasha stared back more intensely causing Tony to gave her a sideways shrug. “We were going to tell everyone. Eventually.”

Realizing just how deep in the mad-science pool Tony was swimming, Natasha did what any exhausted mother would do when the kids got out of hand, she called their father.

She pulled out her phone and dialed without breaking eye contact with Tony.

“Babe,” she said flatly, “Tony wants to use Loki’s scepter to finish building his murder-bot.”

There was a pause.

“Give me five minutes,” Harry replied, then hung up.

Natasha slid the phone back into her pocket and turned to the boys.

“Daddy’s coming.” Bruce whispered to Tony who in turn gulped.

Within five minutes, the entire Avengers crew had gathered in the research lab.

Tony and Bruce stood awkwardly at the center of the room like school kids about to be sent to the principal’s office.

“So,” Steve began, arms crossed, “what’s this about?”

Tony threw up his hands. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell anyone. I knew we’d turn it into a town hall where we all take turns talking about ethics and responsibility.”

Natasha didn’t flinch. “Tony wants to use Loki’s scepter to create Ultron.”

There was a beat of stunned silence.

“Wait, what?” Clint asked, blinking like he hadn’t heard right.

Steve looked at Bruce, then back to Tony. “How is that even possible?”

Thor’s expression darkened, but he stayed silent. Harry said nothing either but his gaze was fixed on the scepter. He wanted to listen before passing judgement.

Natasha took a step back, clearing the floor with a simple wave of her hand. “Go on, Tony. The floor is yours.”

Tony hesitated, visibly weighing whether it was worth the trouble. But one glance from Harry made him straighten up and roll his shoulders back.

“Alright, fine,” he muttered. “Let’s do this.”

He turned to the central console and tapped a few commands into the interface. “Back in Sokovia, I got a look at what Strucker was building. The man was a lunatic, sure but he was also onto something. His advancements were... well, impressive. More than they should’ve been. And it wasn’t just Chitauri tech he was repurposing.”

Tony paused as a holographic projection shimmered to life in the center of the room. It bloomed outward in a golden lattice, complex and fluid like a living web of data.

“You may recognize this,” he said.

“JARVIS,” Clint said, eyeing the golden projection rotating in midair.

“Mr. Barton,” JARVIS replied smoothly.

Tony stepped forward. “Started out, JARVIS was just a natural language interface. Something to talk to me while I built things on the shop.”

“Now he runs the Iron Legion and handles mission oversight,” Steve added.

“And half the company, probably more, if we’re being honest,” Harry said with a shrug.

“And this entire tower,” Thor offered.

“Top of the line,” Tony said, with a small, satisfied nod.

The others nodded with him. For all their quirks and power, they knew JARVIS was the engine keeping the machine running. He was more than software, he was part of the team.

“I suspect not for long,” JARVIS interjected.

Tony’s smile dimmed just slightly. “Right. Now... meet the competition.”

He typed in a new command.

Next to JARVIS’s tidy lattice, a second hologram bloomed into the air and immediately drew gasps.

The new matrix was massive. Easily three, maybe four times the size of JARVIS’s. Its structure was more chaotic, layered with intertwining networks, pulsing with shifting blue light. Lines curved in unpredictable arcs, nodes blinking in what looked like reaction rather than rhythm.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Bruce said softly, stepping closer to the projection.

The others remained silent, studying the massive lattice of shifting blue light. It pulsed and shimmered in complex patterns.

Tony broke the silence. “If you had to guess… what does it look like it’s doing?”

No one answered. The web of glowing data floated above them.

Tony turned. “Bruce?”

Bruce adjusted his glasses and stared at the matrix.

“Like it’s... thinking,” he said. “Look at this—”

He zoomed in on a portion of the structure, where streams of light pulsed and shifted in sequence.

“These patterns, these are like neurons firing. It’s reacting like it’s listening in to our conversations.”

A few of the Avengers exchanged uneasy glances.

“JARVIS,” Tony said, turning to the projection, “tell the rest of the team what you found in your analysis of the scepter.”

“The jewel appears to be a protective housing for something inside,” JARVIS started. “Something powerful.”

“Something cosmic that mortals cannot comprehend,” Thor suggested worriedly.

“No, sir,” JARVIS replied evenly. “Something more akin to a computer. I believe I am deciphering code.”

That drew stunned silence.

Harry leaned forward slightly, frowning. “You’re saying there’s a supercomputer… inside an alien artifact?”

“It’s highly complex,” JARVIS added. “Far beyond anything I’ve encountered. But the structure is systematic. Logical. Designed.”

Harry turned to Thor, eyebrows raised. “How can an Infinity Stone be a supercomputer?”

Thor’s expression was unreadable, his gaze fixed on the projection.

“I do not know,” he admitted. “But perhaps... it is not an Infinity Stone at all. Or if it is, then it is something we do not yet understand. I will need to consult Odin. The Stones are older than this universe, but even myths can be incomplete.”

“Down in Strucker's lab, I saw some fairly advanced robotics work,” Tony said, stepping back into the center of the room. “They wiped most of the data, but… I’m willing to bet he was knocking on a very particular door.”

“Artificial intelligence,” Steve said quietly.

Tony nodded. “Exactly. And then I got a look at this thing.” He gestured to the massive blue matrix still hovering between them. “And it hit me. This isn’t just potential power. This is an opportunity.”

He looked around the room, eyes lingering on each teammate in turn. “Look, when a hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space, we stood three hundred feet below it, staring up like ants.”

He pointed upward.

“We’re the Avengers. Sure, we can take down arms dealers, Hydra cells, terrorists all day, every day. But that?” He pointed again, higher. “That’s the endgame. That’s what’s coming next. And it’s coming; maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But eventually.”

Tony let that hang in the air.

“This is the only planet we’ve got. A tiny blue dot in the middle of an uncaring universe. No backup. No do-overs. No reinforcements.”

He turned back to the projection, voice lowering.

“If we can use this, this mind, to build something that protects the Earth from everything out there... then don’t we have to try?”

Seeing Tony’s conviction, Bruce finally stepped forward. “Tony’s right,”

“Finally,” Tony muttered under his breath, earning a faint smirk from Bruce.

“We’ve got the scepter for, what, two maybe three days? After that, Thor takes it back to Asgard and it’s gone, maybe forever. Strucker had it for who knows how long and couldn’t crack it. Yes, we’ve got better tech, better minds, but way less time.”

He looked around at the others. “Artificial intelligence has always been theoretical. Something just out of reach. But this? This might be the bridge. And if it is… don’t we owe it to the world to at least try?”

Bruce paused, then added, “We’re not talking about launching a program and walking away. We’re talking about oversight. Control. We’ll monitor every line of code. If it even starts to look unstable, we shut it down.”

He looked at Harry, then at Steve. “We try, but we do it together.”

“And what happens if you don’t succeed in two days?” Clint asked.

There was a beat of silence.

“Then Thor takes the scepter back,” Natasha said firmly. “And the two of you don’t say a word about bringing it back to Earth or following it to Asgard. This conversation ends. Permanently.”

Her voice left no room for debate.

Bruce nodded immediately, eager to show he understood.

Tony opened his mouth, hesitated… then sighed. “Fine.” He raised his hands in mock surrender. “If we don’t make a breakthrough in two days, we shut it down. No second chances, no rehashing. Deal.”

Natasha gave him a long look, then nodded. “Good.”

“Like all things,” Natasha said, glancing around the room, “let’s put it to a vote.”

She raised her hand first. “All in support?”

Tony’s hand shot up immediately, followed a beat later by Bruce’s. Harry raised his hand next, and after a brief pause, so did Clint.

Steve and Thor remained still.

That was five to two.

Tony grinned and gave a subtle fist pump, mouthing, “Yes.”

Clint let out a breath through his nose and looked away. Bruce shifted nervously. Steve crossed his arms but said nothing. Thor looked at the projection again, troubled.

Natasha lowered her hand and nodded once, finalizing the verdict.

“Majority rules,” she said. “You’ve got two days.”

“Two days, Stark,” Thor warned. Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked out, the weight of his displeasure trailing behind him like a storm cloud.

The room fell into a tense silence.

Steve lingered for a moment, then turned toward Clint. “The rest I can understand. But you, I could not understand. Why did you vote for this?”

Clint met his eyes without flinching. No sarcasm. No jokes. Just honesty.

“Everyone knows that I’ve got a third kid on the way, Cap.”

That alone made Steve pause.

Clint continued. “Every time I go out there, Laura’s left behind, wondering if that’s the last time she’ll see me. Even with Harry around, ready to teleport in and bail me out the moment things go sideways… it doesn’t stop her from worrying. It doesn’t stop me from worrying either. When I was younger, I didn’t care going out as a hero. But growing older, my priorities are changing. Now, I want to go back home to be there for my wife and kids. But it’s not so easy for people in our line of business. We fight enemies that the world is incapable of defending itself from.”

He exhaled slowly. “I’ve been with SHIELD, I’ve been with you guys and I’ve seen it over and over. Different enemies. Different flags. Same fight. It never ends, Steve. The fighting never ends. The faces might be different, the cause might be different but the fighting never stops. There will always be fighting. It’s human nature.”

His gaze drifted toward the scepter’s projection. “But maybe… maybe this thing Tony and Bruce are building, maybe it’s a way out. Maybe I finally get to go home, tuck my kids in, and stop worrying if I did the right thing to retire.”

Clint looked back at Steve.

“I didn’t vote for a robot army. I voted for a future.”

Steve didn’t respond. Not immediately. He just stood there, the weight of Clint’s words settling on his shoulders like armor.