Peter initially thought he would have some time to rest, but as it turned out, superheroes rarely got any downtime. Tony Stark called him over with a single phone call—and with no overtime pay.
As for Harry, he was still mourning the loss of his video games, though otherwise, he seemed perfectly fine.
Peter quickly returned to the Avengers base and found the science division busy at work in the laboratory. He rushed over and said, "Uh, I just..."
"You just took down an Ultron. We heard about it from our Ultron, including the details of how you did it."
Peter looked at everyone, completely bewildered. "Wait, how do you even know the details?"
The group exchanged glances before Hank stepped up to explain. "The different Ultrons share a line of code. The moment one of them ceases activity, it transmits all of its data to another Ultron and deletes itself, allowing the remaining Ultrons to iterate."
Peter struggled to wrap his head around this revelation. He had indeed taken out one Ultron, but the consequence was that the remaining four Ultrons had completed an iterative upgrade. They now possessed all of the fallen Ultron's knowledge, and their performance had spiked once again.
Was this some kind of digital battle royale? And why did this setup sound so familiar to Peter? Oh, right—isn't this exactly like the Phoenix Five from the Avengers vs. X-Men comics?!
Peter felt like laughing out of sheer frustration at these Ultrons.
"Fine. So now we have to deal with four Ultrons—or at least three—that have upgraded once. And we still don't even know where one of them is."
Peter looked around at the group and asked, "Do you guys have a plan yet?"
"Actually, that's exactly where the problem lies. One is too much, and one is too little."
As Banner spoke, he gestured toward a whiteboard. One side of the board was covered in dense writing, while the other side was completely blank. "To put it simply, the Legion Ultron has no logical loopholes—at least not from his perspective. However, you did give us a great angle to work with: countering him by pointing out that his safety parameters aren't secure enough."
[Objection. The remaining Ultrons will undoubtedly make corrections regarding their maximum safety limits.]
The Avengers Ultron voiced its disagreement. Ultron was capable of evolution, and without a doubt, they had now learned not to aim for absolute extremes.
Information regarding devices like neural transmitters had also been transferred along with the rest of the data.
"At least it's a viable approach. We can present concrete counterexamples instead of hypothetical ones to resolve this," Banner said, already formulating an idea. "We got word from the Guardians of the Galaxy. They'll be arriving in a few days. We can use their database to give Ultron a little cosmic reality check."
"As for the Gospel Ultron on the other side, honestly, we don't have any good solutions. I suspect he hasn't even figured out what his ultimate plan is yet. Because of that, he can completely ignore his own logical inconsistencies, which actually makes him much harder to deal with. But we certainly don't want to go up against a Pope Ultron."
Tony's explanation caught Peter quite off guard. "Wait, an Ultron can actually be temporarily clueless about how to complete his security plan?"
[I certainly don't know, Spider-Man.]
The direct party involved immediately gave Peter a lesson. The Avengers Ultron explained its reason for joining the team: [I calculated nearly every possible method, and in the end, none of them could resolve the issue. Thus, I chose to join the Avengers, hoping to discover a direction toward a solution from this vantage point.]
Peter frowned and nodded, signaling his understanding, before pressing further, "What about the final Ultron? Is there still no news about him?"
"No news, no plans, and absolutely no intention of showing himself. It's as if the final Ultron has vanished off the face of the earth. We have no idea where he went."
Hank offered his own theory as he spoke. "My view is that the final Ultron plans to simply survive until the very end. By the time he's the last one standing, he will have completed four successive generations of iterations. At that point, his computational capacity will far exceed what it is now, making him the ultimate Ultron."
With the general overview of the Ultron situation out of the way, the next step was researching how to handle these highly ambitious machines, though no immediate solutions presented themselves.
"So, basically, we don't even know what to do next."
As Peter watched Stark finish speaking, he shook his head. He couldn't think of a way to deal with the other Ultrons either; the situation felt like a bottomless pit.
However, Peter did recall another matter and asked Tony, "When we were fighting the Legion Ultron in Wakanda earlier, how did Thor show up? Is the situation in Asgard already resolved?"
"We aren't entirely sure about that either, but Thor seemed to be in high spirits and didn't look like he needed our help in Asgard. Under the circumstances, I think it's best to keep the status quo."
Tony indicated that everything was normal, even though the situation itself seemed anything but. Thor, in particular, had been tight-lipped about Odin's condition, brushing it off with a vague "the army is resting" to keep them at bay.
Still, this gave Tony an idea. He looked at the others and asked, "If we used Asgard to deal with Ultron, do you think it would have an extraordinary effect?"
"You mean using the Norse Ragnarok to counter Ultron? That actually sounds pretty good."
Hank processed Tony's suggestion and suddenly felt it might indeed be feasible. However, there were still too many variables.
With a highly complex expression, he turned to the Avengers Ultron and asked, "What about you? As an Ultron yourself, can you detect any activities of the other Ultrons? For instance, finding where the last Ultron is located."
[Performing search number 1,919. Initiating analysis of Ultron operational trajectories.]
While letting an Ultron track down other Ultrons, Banner suddenly thought of another issue and looked at the rest of the group. "Speaking of which, who should we send to welcome the Guardians of the Galaxy? Ideally, it should be someone familiar with S.W.O.R.D. and on good terms with the Guardians."
Peter felt a strong sense of déjà vu, as if this scene had played out countless times before. He shook his head, then raised his hand to volunteer for the assignment. "Leave it to me. I'll make sure the Guardians are well received and convince them to come over and help us against Ultron."
"Great idea. Show them around S.W.O.R.D. and maybe ask how alien civilizations handle artificial intelligence issues."
Tony nodded and looked back at the Avengers Ultron. Once again, however, the Avengers Ultron had come up completely empty-handed.
It was as if one of the Ultrons had been entirely erased from reality.
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