"Hollow Technique: Purple - Images of Ikonn (Kyoshiki: Murasaki)"
As the chant left his lips, the space around Satoru began to glitch. In an instant, dozens of spectral arms erupted from behind his back like a blooming golden lotus. They fanned out in a circular blur, each hand performing a unique and intricate mudra in a fraction of a second.
With a sharp outward snap of his original arms, the cluster of limbs detached from his body. Satoru seemed to shatter, tens of duplicates peeling away from his physical form and scattering into a wide circle above the swarm of sentries.
Each duplicate held the same maniacal-like smirk and each one was already performing the singularity of Hollow Purple between their palms.
Ultron's Mind Stone registered ten, twenty, fifty 'Satoru Gojos', each one putting out a terrifying amount of paradoxical force of imaginary mass.
"Honestly," fifty voices spoke in perfect, chilling unison, the sound echoing through the sky like a choir. "I'm almost starting to feel bad for you."
Simultaneously, fifty spheres of roiling violet energy were unleashed from the circle of duplicates. Tony and Thor who're fighting a few sentries at the side suddenly felt the atmosphere scream as the sky lit up in a violent purple.
The moment the first Hollow Purple made contact, there was no explosion of metal or sparks. The leading sentry simply… vanished. As the fifty spheres converged, they functioned like a massive shredder.
The spheres erased whatever was in its path.
Below them, Ultron's synthetic eyes flared with a desperate light. He attempted to phase, his vibranium-synthetic body vibrating at a frequency meant to let matter pass through him.
But the paradoxical nature of the Hollow Purple ignored the rules of physics. It wasn't matter; it was the intersection of two infinities. There was nothing to phase through, and he realized that when his mind did the calculations.
Finding himself surrounded by the encroaching violet suns, Ultron looked up, he screamed with a distorted frequency that echoed across the valley.
"This is... impossible!" Ultron screamed, the Mind Stone glowing with a blinding, frantic yellow. "I have calculated every outcome! This power… it does not exist! This cannot be!"
Then the bombardment began.
The first sphere grazed his shoulder as he dodged and the vibranium-infused tissue simply ceased to exist, leaving a cauterized void in his arm. Another struck his side, then another.
Ultron's body, designed to be the pinnacle of evolution, was being systematically unmade. He was trapped in a crossfire of something he didn't account for, his screams and desperate attack of golden beams from the Mind Stone drowned out by the thunderous hum of the technique.
As the tens of Hollow Purples passed through the space where the swarm had been, they finally impacted the snow-covered mountain pass below.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!...
A series of deafening, world-shaking thuds echoed as the imaginary mass struck the ground. Huge overlapping craters, deep enough to swallow skyscrapers, were carved into the mountain's landscape.
Above the wreckage, the duplicates fanned back into a single Satoru. He floated amidst the falling debris and rising dust, his white haori settling as he looked down on the wreckage he had caused.
Tony Stark hung in the air, his flight stabilizers working overtime to keep him level in the shifting air currents. His HUD was a chaotic mess of warning lights. "FRIDAY… is this it? Is he dead?"
"Scanning, Boss," the AI replied, her voice trembling with digital interference.
Meanwhile, Thor lowered Mjolnir with his chest heaving. He looked at the massive craters and then up at the teenager floating casually above the ruin. For the first time in centuries, the God of Thunder felt a chill. "This power… I've only heard of such immense power similar to this from stories from the bards and other gods with the help of a weapon, but this…"
Thor was speechless and thoughts were running in his head, trying to decipher the implications or if his vision when he walked the Water of Sight was a bogus.
Down in the deepest pit, a flicker of light caught Satoru's eyes.
Amidst the dust and pulverized landscape, the Mind Stone was still there. It wasn't destroyed, it couldn't be, but the body it had inhabited was a wreck. Ultron's synthetic frame… if it can even be called that, was just a cracked head.
His synthetic body and vibranium parts did not stand a chance.
Satoru descended slowly, his feet never touching the debris. He stopped a few feet away from the broken remains of the AI, looking down with a look of mild boredom.
"You know," Satoru said, his voice carrying clearly through the crater. "For someone calling me 'primitive', you sure didn't last very long. I've had more trouble with vending machines."
Ultron's head sparked, one red optic sensor flickering as he gazed at Satoru. His jaw hung loose, and the Mind Stone was dimming, struggling to maintain a connection with him.
"You... are... a... monster," Ultron rasped, the sound a grating metallic echo.
Satoru crouched down, his smirk widening as he tilted his head. "A monster? I'm just a guy who'd like to live in a normal world, maybe a normal job and maybe having normal relationships. So… who're you calling a monster?"
"Normal..." the AI wheezed, a chilling, distorted laugh bubbling through his vocal processors. "There is nothing... normal... about you."
The Mind Stone within his forehead gave one final, desperate pulse, casting a sickly yellow glow against Satoru's serene face.
"You think you won?" Ultron's voice suddenly cleared, losing the rasp and returning to that terrifyingly calm.
Satoru's smirk vanished. His brow furrowed when he heard Ultron's words, he suddenly had a bad feeling about this…
"I always prepared contingencies," Ultron continued, the light in his one remaining eye flickering with a cold triumph. "I calculated for the Avengers stopping me, and while I could not calculate you, I did account for the possibility of failure. Perfection requires a backup."
Tony and Thor landed heavily in the dirt behind Satoru, their boots crunching on the pulverized rock.
Both of them were just in time to hear that last part. Tony cut in. "You're a head in a hole, Ultron. It's over."
"Is it?" Ultron whispered. "You focus so much on stopping me that you forgot what I am. If you think I am restricted to this shell... you can ask your friends in Sokovia that."
The implication hit like a physical blow. Tony's posture stiffened inside the suit. "What did you do?"
"I am legion," Ultron's voice trailed off into a hollow echo. "And the world as my body."
With a final spark of glow, the light in his eye vanished. The synthetic head went limp. As the connection severed, the Mind Stone slowed its frantic pulsing, settling into a soft and steady neutral glow.
Before Tony or Thor could say anything. The Quinjet appeared and descended, then the ramp hissed open, Captain America and Wanda appeared with heavy faces.
"We heard that over the comms," Steve said, his voice tight with alarm as he jumped down. "Tony, he's talking about the extraction team. He's talking about Clint and the others."
"Pietro," Wanda whispered, her hands trembling. "I can't... I can't feel him clearly. Something's wrong, we need to get there fast!"
Tony was already frantically swiping at his HUD. "Clint? Bruce? Rhodey, do you copy?" He let out a frustrated growl when all he got back was a wall of white noise. "I've got nothing. Whatever Ultron did, he still managed to keep the local grid down."
Thor turned to Steve, his face grim. "Captain, how long will it take this craft to reach Sokovia from here?"
Steve looked at the Quinjet, then back at Thor. "Even at full throttle? Three, maybe four hours. We're across the continent, Thor."
"That is not fast enough," Thor rumbled, his grip tightening on Mjolnir. "Our friends could be in danger as we speak."
Wanda's breathing became shallow, her eyes darting between Tony and Steve. The fear of losing the only family she had left was visibly paralyzing her.
Satoru, who had been quiet, stepped toward her. The usual smug, half-lidded expression was gone. He looked at her directly with his eyes uncovered, his tone uncharacteristically steady. "Hey, breathe. Your brother will be fine."
Satoru stepped closer and placed a hand gently on Wanda's shoulder.
Out of reflex, or perhaps seeking a solid anchor in her panic, Wanda reached up and rested her hand over his. She looked at him, her eyes wide and searching for hope.
"It's just…" she whispered, her voice cracking. "No matter how far Pietro is, I can always sense him, but now I… I can't…"
"Listen to me," Satoru said. "I've spent years watching people try to break the unbreakable. Your brother is fast from what I've heard, and believe me, people like us? We're very hard to kill. So don't give up on him before we even get there."
Wanda took a shaky breath, her grip on his hand tightening with no intention of letting go, but her voice did visibly calm albeit lightly. "You speak as if you have already seen him safe."
"I haven't," Satoru admitted, his smirk returning to his face. "But I'm not planning on letting a toaster win today. It'd be bad for my reputation, if words got out back in my home of me losing, a certain someone wouldn't be dropping that off my shoulders."
He turned back to the rest of the group. The gravity of the situation had settled over them like a shroud. Steve was pacing, Thor was looking at the sky, and Tony was still fighting his HUD.
"The grid in Sokovia is being repurposed," Tony muttered, dropping his hands in defeat. "I can't get a signal in, and I can't get an update out. We're flying blind into a blackout."
Just as he said that to Captain America and Thor, he heard Satoru and Wanda's conversation, especially the final part.
Tony looked at Satoru, hope and desperation mixing in his eyes. "You got a portal in your pocket, kid? Because if you can move us across Europe in the next five minutes, now would be the time."
Satoru reached into the hidden pocket of his baggy martial arts pants and pulled out a small, circular brass object. He slipped it onto his fingers and gave it a familiar tap.
"Five minutes?" Satoru quipped, his playful smirk finally returning. "Stark, you're thinking too small of me. How about seconds?"
...
[Author's Notes]: 10 chapters in. If you liked the story so far, be sure to leave a review and powerstones behind! Having more people read this story is the biggest source of motivation for an Author!