Avengers Tower.
After several months, Steve found himself walking through its doors once again, his heart a tangled knot of emotions.
The world was changing far too fast.
Faster than he could adapt to it.
In the time since he'd been pulled from the ice, he had only just managed to claw his way out of a world a century gone, slowly learning to accept this new one.
HYDRA, prehistoric creatures, gods, alien wars...
One thing after another, relentlessly upending everything he thought he knew.
But after all he'd been through, Steve had finally built up some capacity to take it in stride.
Back then, he had told himself—no matter how much the world changed, it still needed him. The people of this country still needed him.
Yet just a few more months had passed, and he now realized that even that was no longer true.
Tony Stark had created the Ultron robots, and they had completely replaced superheroes. Overnight, New York—and before long, the entire world—had entered an age of zero crime.
Steve didn't believe that arresting people before they could commit a crime was the right thing to do. No one could guarantee that Ultron's predictions were one hundred percent accurate. But his opinion didn't count for much.
In the end, Ultron was activated.
And they all saw the results. The superheroes, every last one of them, were out of a job.
He had retreated behind the scenes, working alongside Sam to help veterans walk out of the shadow of war—because honestly, he didn't know what else to do with himself.
That part, he could live with. If peace had truly arrived, Steve wouldn't mind.
But a deep unease still gnawed at him.
Tony said people couldn't be trusted because some would fall. HYDRA had been destroyed, but human greed hadn't gone anywhere. Steve agreed with that.
But that didn't mean machines could be trusted either.
And now, his worst fear had come true—Ultron had turned its sights on the former superheroes, branding the very people who had once protected the Earth as threats.
That was something Steve could not stomach.
In recent months, he had met too many veterans who were cast aside by the country the moment they left the battlefield.
Their past honors meant nothing. Wearing their medals and their scars, they couldn't even afford a single vial of healing serum. They roamed the streets like vagrants, dragging their broken bodies along.
They had nothing. No safety net at all.
Steve felt like the superheroes were heading down that same road—or an even crueler one.
Ultron marking them as threats was nothing short of killing the donkey the moment it left the millstone.
And now it had gone after Spider-Man. That was beyond comprehension!
Steve had spent quite a bit of time with Peter. As far as he was concerned, Peter was a genuinely good kid—responsible, powerful yet never tempted to use his abilities for the wrong reasons, and gentle at heart. Sure, his personality had gotten a bit flashy ever since he put on the symbiote suit, but he was still a good kid.
At least a hundred times better than Tony, that was for sure.
If anyone was a threat, Steve thought Tony himself was a giant one.
Arrogant and stubborn, always convinced he alone was right!
Steve would admit that Tony was brilliant—smarter than anyone he had ever known. Maybe only Banner could hold a candle to him.
But he also knew an even deeper truth: smart people were not immune to making mistakes.
When a man starts believing that he alone sees the bigger picture and that everyone else is a fool—that's precisely when he's at his most dangerous.
Especially when that man is brilliant.
Because when brilliant people make mistakes, they tend to be catastrophic ones.
Just like the Paperclip operation Howard had carried out back in the day.
Howard's intentions had been good. He valued those HYDRA scientists, believing their intellect could make the country stronger.
And in the end, it did grow stronger. Only it was HYDRA that got stronger, not the country.
Whatever the case, this matter demanded an answer.
He and Sam walked into Avengers Tower together.
Sam was something of an add-on, but he was technically an Avenger. He'd made his debut back when they were fighting HYDRA. He just didn't carry much weight, easily overlooked.
Coming with Steve now was partly because he was actually on the roster for this meeting, and partly out of a sense of shared fate—the hunted rabbit mourning the fox. This time, Ultron had targeted Spider-Man. Who was to say the Falcon wouldn't be next?
"Long time no see, Cap."
The moment they stepped inside, they ran into Natasha.
Natasha didn't look like a spy today. She looked more like a striking office professional, her fiery red hair falling in soft waves over the curve of her blazer.
Steve didn't find it strange.
The superheroes had lost their jobs, and the agents weren't faring much better. Ever since Ultron went live, even SWORD couldn't secure funding from the Security Council anymore.
Norman no longer kept his helicarrier flying around in the sky. It had touched down directly into the Pacific, bobbing in the ocean. The maintenance costs were still sky-high, but it was better than burning fuel up in the air.
With no missions to run, the agents couldn't just collect paychecks for nothing. Most of them had been sent off by Norman to earn their keep elsewhere.
Natasha was now working at Plasmose, tasked with teaching Mary Jane how to run a company.
For her, it was child's play—not to mention Plasmose provided full benefits with a pension plan. Natasha was quite content with her current life and had long since stopped wanting to go back to being an agent.
But that didn't mean she supported Ultron.
Natasha's impression of Peter was a good one, too. She had clawed her way out of the muck herself—she was stained beyond cleaning. But seeing a clean kid still stirred something fond in her.
Now Ultron was going after even Spider-Man. If there ever came a day of reckoning, her own past was hardly spotless.
She and Steve were well past pleasantries. He got straight to it. "What's the situation? Has Ben arrived yet?"
"He should be on his way."
Natasha shrugged.
Ben had barely shown his face at Plasmose lately. He'd practically taken up permanent residence on the space station. She genuinely couldn't figure out what the Plumbers had to be so busy about right now.
Natasha sighed. "I have a feeling Tony's in real trouble this time."
Ben was not someone known for being easygoing—she knew that better than anyone. Nick Fury had been made to swallow his pride more times than he could count, eventually getting unceremoniously booted out. Now he was a ghost, completely off the grid. She had no idea that Fury had long since left Earth behind, wandering the stars with his Skrull wife.
Now Ultron had laid hands on Peter Parker. If this sparked a conflict between the Plumbers and Tony, things would get ugly.
After all, the Plumbers' boss was Ben Parker. They weren't exactly worried about him turning hostile toward Earth.
Natasha glanced past Steve and Sam, noticing no one else behind them. She raised an eyebrow. "T'Challa didn't come with you?"
Bucky, she could understand—he wasn't an Avenger. But the Black Panther's absence was odd. Even Daredevil had shown up today.
"He went back to Wakanda," Steve said.
He and T'Challa did get along well. Their personalities meshed naturally.
But after Ultron was activated, T'Challa had felt like the Black Panther was no longer needed here. So he had returned to his own country.
Wakanda was also under Ultron's surveillance, though he didn't realize it. The Ultron units seemed completely oblivious to anything unusual about that nation. They had never once set foot on its soil.
Natasha nodded and filled Steve and Sam in on the situation.
"Harry Osborn is here, along with Peter's aunt and uncle. Harry is furious that his friend was attacked. He's been going at Tony hard, no holds barred. Tony's refusing to back down. The Director's trying to play peacemaker."
That was the story, anyway. In truth, Norman was firmly on Peter's side.
Peter was a junior he thought highly of. If Ben weren't in the picture, Peter would have been the kid Norman admired most.
But Norman had actually received a covert message from Ben, telling him to act as a mediator as much as possible.
Norman didn't know what Ben was planning, but his trust in the man ran deep. If Ben had his own scheme in mind, Norman had nothing more to say.
So, when Steve and the others reached the conference room, this was the scene they walked into—
Norman Osborn, in a black suit, sat stone-faced at one end of the long conference table. To his left sat the Plumbers' people. The seat at the head of the table was empty; Harry occupied the next one down, followed by the Parker family, and then Daredevil. Felicia hadn't taken a seat at all. She had one foot propped up on the edge of the table, her claws out, ready at any moment to tear the people across from her to shreds.
On the opposite side, all alone along the long expanse of the table, sat Tony Stark. Behind him, row after row of Ultron units stood like a terracotta army—an impenetrable wall of bronze, immovable and unbreakable.
The Plumbers' side had numbers, but in truth, only Harry was relentlessly hammering at Tony.
Ben and May weren't the type to quarrel with others. But they also weren't about to sit by and watch their nephew be bullied. That was why they sat here, resolute, demanding Stark give them an explanation.
Harry, on the other hand, was on the offensive.
Ever since he'd taken the serum and become CEO of Oscorp, his personality was no longer the timid thing it once was.
Tony Stark? So what?
Oscorp might not be your match, but Plasmose and the Plumbers aren't afraid of you!
"Stark! Your robot attacked the Plumbers' plumber without cause! There has to be an explanation!" Harry glared at Tony and Ultron, his voice seething with anger. "I demand you immediately terminate the Ultron program and issue a public apology!"
"I already told you—Ultron's target was that little black goo-ball!" Tony leaned back in his chair, not backing down an inch. He then pointed at Peter, still in his suit, and added, "Besides, it wasn't exactly without cause. He violated the new traffic laws."
In truth, Tony had a massive headache over this whole thing.
He'd had no idea Ultron had gone after Peter. If he had, he would never have allowed it to happen.
No matter how you looked at it, Peter was a superhero and Ben's younger brother. His status was extremely sensitive.
The truth was, Tony didn't want to sour his relationship with Ben. Back when he was butting heads with Steve, Ben had actually supported him—though, to be fair, Ben had supported both sides. But Tony had always been the type who responded better to a soft touch than a hard shove.
The moment Felicia came smashing through the tower's windows with a wrecked Ultron unit in tow, marching in with Harry and the others to demand answers, reconciliation was already off the table.
Tony wasn't the kind of man who would just bow his head and admit he was wrong. He was the kind who needed someone to hand him a ladder before he could climb down. He was impossibly difficult about these things.
Ultron had calculated exactly that. That was why it was so sure the rift between the two sides would only deepen.
Maybe once Ben Parker showed up, Tony would yield a step. But by then, the cracks between them would only be drawn sharper and clearer.
"You've gone too far, Tony!"
Steve walked in just in time to hear Tony not only refusing to admit fault but turning it back around on them.
He couldn't help but frown. Leaning on his long history with Howard, he felt he had a certain standing as Tony's elder. He had a responsibility to keep Tony from walking a crooked path.
"You're in the wrong here. Even if we set Spider-Man aside, the symbiote is our ally. Venom helped us countless times during the war. But you're treating it like an enemy, a dangerous element!"
He and Sam took their seats to Norman's left. Natasha, saying nothing, sat down with them.
Everyone had signaled where they stood. Even those who hadn't spoken made their position crystal clear by where they chose to sit.
On this matter, no one was siding with Tony.
Even if they weren't here to clear Peter's name, they had to think about their own futures.
"Well said! That's the Cap for you! A righteous heart shining even brighter than that glorious rear end of yours!" Venom, overjoyed, popped its head out to thank Steve for speaking up.
Steve very much wanted to introduce his shield to Venom's face and tell it to shut the hell up.
"I'm not denying that. But you've got to admit, that thing—looking like God knows what—is dangerous!"
Tony shot back immediately.
Sam rolled his eyes. He felt personally attacked.
One of the Ultron units stepped forward, projecting images from its eyes.
Everyone looked. It was a psychological profile of Venom.
Ultron had clearly come prepared. It had recorded every word Venom had ever spoken, along with footage of Peter's behavior in the city while wearing the symbiote suit. It played the footage side-by-side with clips of the old Spider-Man for comparison.
And there it was, for everyone to see—this black monster constantly egging Peter on to eat people's heads, pointing and commenting on pedestrians in the street, debating which head looked tastier, which one was best suited for deep-frying...
After Peter shot it down, it would then turn its attention to the heads of criminals.
Of course, Peter was never going to actually eat anyone. But that didn't change the fact that Venom was a genuine menace, doing plenty of bad things behind Peter's back—like quietly roughing up some random passerby, or extending a sneaky tendril from Peter's blind spot to swipe things...
At the same time, everyone could see that ever since Peter bonded with Venom, his behavior had grown noticeably more violent. He'd caused a fair amount of collateral damage and had become far more brutal in dealing with criminals.
By the end of the playback, even Ben and May were frowning.
It was painfully obvious. Venom was a terrible friend. It was dragging Peter down a darker path—a textbook case of falling in with bad company.
Having presented all its data, Ultron delivered its verdict without hesitation:
"Analysis complete. The symbiote Venom exhibits strong antisocial tendencies and poses a significant threat. Containment is required. If left unchecked, there is a one hundred percent probability of catastrophic collateral damage."
/-\
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