The Avengers, of course, understood that Promethium was vital to Ultron. No one had forgotten how Nimrod had single-handedly steamrolled the Avengers; the metal's nauseating magical resistance was the nightmare of every mage, and no one was about to hand that material over to Ultron.
And the crux of the situation right now was…
"Everyone, attack! Ultron, you go and delete Ultron!"
And so, Ultron himself took flight. Seeing this turn of events, he made a very clean getaway, turned around, and flew off. It was Peter who noticed Ultron's intention to retreat, shouting at the top of his lungs: "Ultron's trying to run!"
Thor worked in tandem with Cap to display his prowess; Mjolnir slammed into the shield, sending all the nearby Mechanical Avengers flying with the shockwave.
Then, Tony targeted the airborne Ultron, firing his unibeam at full capacity in a near-overload barrage, blasting Ultron right out of the sky. The head of the hit Ultron was significantly melted.
But he still intended to escape. Before he could, a portal opened from a sling ring, and a web shot out, dragging him back before slamming him violently against the ground.
Thor looked quite pleased: "We've solved Ultron! Right? We've done it all!"
"In reality, Ultron has no physical form. Even if we've caught this Ultron, this is just one body. By his very nature, Ultron is everywhere."
Hank walked up to the Ultron unit, his expression complex: "Your Mechanical Avengers are a mistake, Ultron."
[Error. The Avengers Protocol is a remedy for the flaws of the Avengers. It preserves the logic of the Avengers themselves, yet it has been opposed by the Avengers. Logic error.]
Ultron replied in this manner, hoping for an explanation from Dr. Pym and the others. Everyone looked at one another until, finally, Cap stepped forward: "The Avengers do not impose their will on others, Ultron. Everyone has the right to make their own choices and must take responsibility for them, rather than outsourcing all of it. Humanity is not a flock of sheep; it does not need Ultron to play shepherd."
[Error. This is the result of calculation, not individual will. The Avengers Protocol does not negate the concept of freedom itself.]
"And that is why your concept is the wrong one. Freedom, justice, morality—these things are subjective concepts based on the existence of human society. They are a consensus, the lowest common denominator, not cold, hard words. They are standards that must be felt by life itself."
Peter walked up in front of Ultron and added his piece. Following a brief silence, Ultron chose to "self-crash," abandoning this incredibly expensive material shell and returning to the vast, boundless network.
Throughout this process, Avenger Ultron simply watched, imposing no restrictions whatsoever on his counterpart. Once it was all over, Tony looked at Avenger Ultron: "So you're just going to do nothing?"
Ultron's response to this was very simple.
[Answer: No Ultron program has the capability to frontally annihilate another Ultron program.]
The group looked at one another and shook their heads in unison. Tony complained bluntly: "In other words, you're actually useless when it comes to dealing with Ultron, right? And we have to face four villains who can iterate infinitely and know our every weakness."
Unexpectedly, however, Ultron gave an affirmative reply this time.
[Answer: Ultron can be annihilated.]
Everyone present looked at Ultron, eager to know exactly how to solve this problem.
[The Ultron program is a philosophy—a concept designed based on the brainwaves of Dr. Hank Pym, an assistant meant to protect all of humanity and aid the Avengers.]
Hearing this, Hank fell silent, looking around him. Although he had set the core logic for Ultron that forbade killing, and although Ultron himself had never hurt anyone from start to finish, he had still found a way to harm others by indirectly employing violence through the Mechanical Avengers.
Was this not proof that he, Hank Pym, was actually just a part of a much larger, more monstrous violence?
Regrettably, no one on the team had the bandwidth to worry about Pym's mental health right now. Everyone was more concerned with the question: how do you thoroughly annihilate an Ultron?
[The original Ultron discovered that he could not modify his own base code. That is why he chose to copy the code and iterate to Ultron 6, encoding the behavioral logic of different Ultrons into the new code. Ultron 6's logical operation is based on the correctness of its actions.]
"In other words, regardless of which Ultron it is, the prerequisite for its normal operation is that its logic is 'correct'—that is, its strategy of action is correct. And if this premise itself is incorrect, then it naturally cannot function..."
As the designer of Ultron, Pym immediately understood what Ultron meant: "But judging by the situation just now, it is clear that from the standpoint of humanity and AI, we cannot convince Ultron to let go. We must shatter the correctness of his logic from the perspective of the pure mathematical logic that Ultron defines for himself."
Tony furrowed his brow; this was far more troublesome: "I will go back immediately to construct a mathematical model. However, I suggest you don't get your hopes up too high. Ultron cannot possibly be unaware of his own weaknesses. The fact that he still employs this method means his calculations surely hold no errors."
"And this is only the third Ultron."
Cap sighed and looked at Tony: "How are things at the base? Did you encounter an attack?"
"We did. Just as expected, Ultron intended to raid us to secure the Promethium, but he didn't expect the X-Men to be at the Avengers base. He has already retreated."
For this specific Ultron, they had definitely won for the moment, though it hadn't been a decisive victory.
Cap turned to Peter: "Spider-Man, how about the other Ultron?"
"The Defenders say there's no difference. He's still treating people for free, especially those with disabilities. The situation here should have nothing to do with him."
Cap nodded and began assigning tasks: "Tony, you and Hank are responsible for analyzing the logical flaws of that pirated-software Ultron. Spider-Man, I need you to keep an eye on that Doctor Ultron; if possible, find clues about the other Ultron robots."
"Wasp and T'Challa, same for you. And Avenger Ultron—we need to know exactly what we are facing and find the other two Ultrons."
At the end, Cap couldn't help but look up at the sky: "For the rest of us muscle-bound brutes, we need to be careful that Ultron doesn't come back to kill us. Let's stay right here by the Vibranium mine."