October: In an effort to defeat Ultron after he spread his presence on the Internet and made a new body for himself at a robotics laboratory, Hawkeye inducted the S.H.I.E.L.D. team into the Avengers. The Avengers Initiative had been a S.H.I.E.L.D. program to begin with and Fury turned a blind eye to the merged team. S.H.I.E.L.D. itself was too busy with HYDRA, as the organization tipped the war against S.H.I.E.L.D. in their favor due to Ultron crippling S.H.I.E.L.D.'s technology. As Avengers, the agents took on the following codenames: Psychia (Niah Bautista), Only Idiots Have Codenames (Raynor Blake), Bastet (Bonnie Chase), Firestorm (Freddie Flynn), Sparky (Theresa Sparks), Dominion (Tinley Abercrombie), Livewire (Tempest Renroir), Titanium (Cassandra Reed), Mockingjay (Maria Smith), and Reverse Iron Man (Harry McCormick).
The mission to eliminate Ultron completely was unsuccessful. Not only was Ultron still out there and replicating himself, but the team suffered great losses... Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and War Machine all gave their lives in the battle. Spider-Gwen sustained serious injuries and Ultron used the Hulk against them, dividing the team in an ultimately meaningless fight.
November: By this point, it wasn't just S.H.I.E.L.D. that Ultron disabled technologically. He recaptured Hank Pym and forced him to build a robotic army for him and threatening the lives of his wife and daughter, both of whom he held captive, Ultron's influence encompassed the world. The nation of Wakanda was one of the few places beyond Ultron's influence, thanks to the technological expertise of Shuri. Her brother T'Challa, the King and the Black Panther, left Wakanda and joined the remnants of the Avengers, along with Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel).
The Fantastic Four launched an attack against Ultron's base of operations in New York City (as where else would a villain settle?) but like the original Avengers team, it wasn't enough. Only the Invisible Woman survived, with Ultron sparing her life and instructing her to tell the other superheroes in the world that it was pointless to stop him. He had already won. A few superhero teams disbanded, with the X-Men being one of the only hold outs. The mutant based group had combined with Serval Industries' X-Factor team, as well as some remaining chapters of the Mutant Underground, and started to plan an assault.
December: The X-Men's assault plan never got to see the light of day. Ultron managed to corrupt Danger, the sentient Danger Room that they used to train. Danger brutally murdered the X-Men, broadcasting the murders worldwide in order to crush any remaining portions of hope. The X-Factor team was brought to Ultron by the Hellfire Club as a peace offering, beginning a deal of sorts - criminals had their lives spared and were allowed a semblance of autonomy within Ultron's organization, provided they brought him the heroes that would rebel against him - living or dead. Some members of the Brotherhood accepted this arrangement as well, but others defected and went into hiding.
Towards the end of the month, Luminous had been freed from the Raft by Ultron. She found the Avengers team and brought them to Ultron. They narrowly managed to escape with their lives, as Tempest used her hacking skills to temporarily stall Ultron. The Avengers team was able to get away, but Luminous tortured Tempest for information. She didn't reveal their base of operations. Luminous ripped out her heart.
January: The Avengers team was taking in more and more heroes, including Agent Roman Carter and a young teen from Queens - Spider-Man. He and Spider-Gwen worked well together, though Spider-Gwen eventually revealed that in her home reality, she had known a Peter Parker. His death had been her fault. It was too painful for her to be around him, so she left the team. They didn't find a body, so everyone assumed she either had disappeared or that Ultron had captured her.
T'Challa, the Black Panther, had managed to get information from his sister on a potential virus they could use to stop Ultron. The Avengers team took the virus and went to Ultron's lair. Although they were successful in installing it, it only momentarily stunned Ultron, before he adapted beyond it. T'Challa and Peter were killed in the escape attempt. To add insult to injury, Ultron then televised the executions of Dr. Pym and his family, seemingly having no use for the inventor any longer.
February: The team had smuggled themselves across borders and enemy lines, making it to the safety of Wakanda. T'Challa sister, Shuri, had taken up the mantle of the Black Panther. Although she was able to use her skills in hacking to keep Ultron out of Wakanda, there was only so much Wakanda could do. The team discussed it and recommitted themselves as Avengers, as agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and they planned to evacuate people from a nearby concentration camp of sorts that Ultron had constructed.
This was the first victory for the team with everything that happened. They managed to get one hundred people to the safety of Wakanda, but it was not without sacrifice. Ultron managed to hijack control over one of the vehicles they were using for the evacuation and he blew it up, killing everyone on board. Harry McCormick had been the one driving that bus.
March: The world was more or less entirely under Ultron's thumb, with any living person either joining his organization (the criminals) or being sent to a work camp (everyone else). The vigilantes and the heroes were executed on live television, as a reminder that there was no hope in this world. The age of heroes had ended and this was the age of Ultron. Given that, Ultron could not tolerate Wakanda's existence any longer. Taking some powered individuals from one of his work camps, Ultron brainwashed them and sent them into Wakanda, pretending to be refugees.
Their powers were chosen in order to allow them to level the nation in a way Ultron could not. Some of them caused fires, some of them caused tornadoes, but the deadliest weapon Ultron used was disease. A young mutant girl brought back the Bubonic plague. Others Ultron sent then targeted the medical supplies, essentially giving the people of Wakanda a choice: die a gruesome death from disease or submit to Ultron's regime. Sparky was one of those who succumbed to the plague, as well as Director Fury.
Wakanda opened its borders and surrendered.
April: The team, alongside Shuri, had been placed in a detainment center and were being transported back to Ultron's headquarters. Once they reached New York City, they were saved by some unlikely allies: Spider-Gwen and Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts. The Sorcerer Supreme used his magic and transported them to the New York Sanctum, a place that he had disguised mystically so that way no technological being could find it. Ultron didn't even know that it existed. The sorcerers there helped to heal those who had fallen ill, using their powers to do something medicine could not.
Meanwhile, Ultron publicly executed the Queen of Wakanda.
May: More and more of the sorcerers at the New York Sanctum gave their lives in efforts to free people from captivity. In some cases, they were successful and the refugees were taken to the London or Hong Kong Sanctums, far away from Ultron's main base of operations. There was even some thought given to using magic to send them to another planet in the galaxy or potentially to send them across the multiverse into a different reality. For various reasons, all of these evacuation efforts failed. By the end of the month, Doctor Strange was the only sorcerer left in the New York Sanctum.
June: Ultron introduced his heir, the Vision, to the world. The synthezoid had been constructed earlier in the year, but only was now activated as Ultron felt the world had finally submitted to his dynasty. The remaining team members and Doctor Strange were considered public enemies, with large rewards being offered for any information to help locate them and the Sanctums. Somehow, Maria also got a hold of an Iron Patriot suit.
You are all that remains of the world - you are the last line of defense, the last bit of hope, the last
shield.
New York Sanctum - New York: July 15th, 2021 - 7:00 P.M.
It had been an incredibly surreal nine months. No one could have predicted a devastation on this level was possible - no one had seen this coming. In hindsight, of course, the apocalyptic destruction of the world by Ultron made a scary amount of sense. The X-Men had averted an apocalyptic future at the hands of O.M.E.N. - so the universe decided to mix things up a bit, making an even worse future for the world come even sooner. Raynor Blake sat in a corner of the Sanctum by himself, sharpening his blade, Lytin. He hadn't been the most open book before Sparky died. Without her, he had started questioning what the point of all of this was lately. It was a surprising friendship formed with Spider-Gwen, with Raynor feeling like an older brother to the web slinger, that had kept him from saying
screw it and just joining Ultron's regime.
"Hey, you wanna play a prank on Strange?" Spider-Gwen asked Raynor. Her hood was down, revealing a kind face. Her blonde hair was half shaved, creating an interesting mohawk sort of effect. In front of her, she had a little drum pad and she was absentmindedly hitting her drumsticks against it.
"Sure kid," Raynor said quietly, putting his knife away.
"How exactly are you planning on pranking the wizard?" Spider-Gwen shrugged.
"You're old as dirt - maybe even older - figured you'd have an idea or two." Over at the top of the staircase in the Sanctum, a makeshift medical area had been set up. Bonnie was busy tending to wounds that the Black Panther (Shuri), the Invisible Woman (Susan), and Captain Marvel (Carol) had obtained on their latest reconnaissance mission. She tried to approach each day with a fresh attitude, but her face was pale and her hair had dulled in color, losing a bit of its golden shine. Everyone here was capable of extraordinary things. They all had powers they could rely on in order to fight back against Ultron and his army. She, instead, was just a liability.
"There, just let me know if it looks like it gets infected or anything," she told Captain Marvel, finishing patching up her arm.
"You got it, Doc," Captain Marvel said with a smirk.
"Did you uh... Did you find anything?" Dr. Banner asked. He was working with Bonnie in the medical area, knowing that an out of control green rage machine wasn't exactly what they needed at the moment. Dr. Strange was at the bottom of the staircase, floating a few inches in the air as he meditated. He didn't seem to be in the most talkative mood at the moment.
"Yes. You will not like what we found," Shuri, Princess of Wakanda and the current Black Panther, told Banner and Bonnie grimly. They had managed to intercept some plans, taking out a small portion of Ultron-bots in the process. The designs, well...
"To use a Star Wars metaphor - Ultron is building his Death Star," Captain Marvel interjected.
"With the weapon he's building, and to describe it in non-Star Wars terms, he could potentially destroy any city or country on the planet... He probably could destroy the entire planet, or some other planet if he felt like it," Susan Storm explained.
Bonnie bit her lip slightly. Each time it seemed like Ultron couldn't possibly do any further damage, he managed it. She had to wonder how Novikova and Pym would have reacted, knowing that this was the price for saving their loved ones from the Quantum Realm. Sparky wasn't even still alive. Her eyes darted towards the corner, spotting the only survivors of the Quantum Realm left alive - Spider-Gwen and Raynor. Had their lives been worth all of this?
"...What's our play, then?" Bonnie asked softly.
