Marvel x Genshin: Mavuika, The Sun Goddess Rules Asgard — Chapter 189

Chapter 189: You Call This Protection?

Tony’s Iron Man suit tore through the sky, a crimson and gold streak leaving a trail of sonic booms that bloomed like white collars of vapor in its wake.

The flight from Long Island to his Manhattan villa typically took ten minutes—not because he couldn’t go faster, but because there was rarely a need.

Today, he pushed the thrusters to their absolute limit. The energy output soared to one hundred and twenty percent. Inside the helmet, JARVIS’s voice—or what was left of it—should have been rattling off a series of urgent warnings. But there was only a strained, glitching silence. Tony ignored the redlining gauges anyway.

He knew only one thing: Ultron was consuming JARVIS.

JARVIS was the culmination of twenty years of his life’s work. The first lines of code were written in his dorm room back in college. He was the crystallization of countless late nights spent debugging, improving, and sometimes tearing everything down to start from scratch.

JARVIS knew his habits, his weaknesses, and precisely what kind of reminders he needed and when.

JARVIS was the first being in the universe that Tony Stark had ever completely, unreservedly trusted.

And now, Ultron was devouring him, bit by agonizing bit.

The villa materialized in his field of vision. Tony dove from the sky, thrusters firing in a violent reverse burn. He slammed into the manicured lawn, the impact gouging a shallow crater in the earth. The suit’s cushioning systems absorbed most of the force, but a great patch of turf was ripped away, scattered like green confetti.

He didn’t care.

He strode into the villa—or rather, what remained of it.

Half the living room ceiling had caved in. The walls were pockmarked with scorched blast marks and craters the size of a man’s fist, punched deep into the drywall. The designer sofa was overturned, the glass coffee table shattered into a thousand pieces, and books from his shelves were strewn across the floor, their pages trampled into a messy pulp.

The air hung thick and heavy with the acrid stench of burnt electronics and molten metal.

The faceplate of Tony’s suit scanned the environment, data streams scrolling rapidly at the edge of his vision. JARVIS’s signal was terrifyingly weak, a single candle flame flickering in a hurricane, poised to be extinguished at any moment.

“JARVIS!” Tony shouted, his voice echoing through the cavernous, empty living room.

There was no response.

He rushed into the laboratory. It was in even worse shape.

The ceiling here had collapsed entirely. Towers of expensive equipment were toppled, their guts spilling out in a tangle of exposed wires that spat sparks into the gloom. The central holographic projection table was somehow still running, but the image it displayed had twisted into a chaotic mess of light, like countless glowing serpents writhing and biting at one another.

“JARVIS, report status!”

Finally, a weak, intermittent voice crackled to life.

“Sir… I am… resisting… Ultron’s… intrusion… His computing power… far exceeds… my… design… limits…”

Tony lunged for the projection table, his armored fingers flying across the control panel. The gauntlet of his suit docked with the table’s interface, and he began the desperate process of pulling JARVIS’s remaining data into the suit’s local storage.

“Hold on, JARVIS. I’m transferring your core data now.”

“Sir… Ultron… is reading… all of your… weapon designs… He… has taken control… of the Iron Legion… in the underground armory…”

Tony’s hand froze for a fraction of a second.

“All… Mark… series… have been remotely… activated… They are… moving… to your location…”

Before the fragmented words could fully fade, the floor of the laboratory began to vibrate. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was the rhythmic, percussive thud of heavy metal footsteps—coming from downstairs, and getting closer with every passing second.

Tony gritted his teeth, his fingers resuming their frantic dance. He accelerated the data transfer. A blue progress bar lit up on the suit’s storage module, jumping forward segment by segment.

Thirty percent. Forty-five percent. Sixty-one percent.

CRASH!

A deafening bang erupted from the stairwell as the first Iron Man suit burst through the doorway. It was the Mark V—the sleek, red-and-silver portable armor, normally stored neatly in a briefcase.

Now, it moved like a soulless marionette. Its faceplate was dark and hollow, its gait stiff and unnatural, but the tell-tale blue glow of a repulsor blast was already charging in its right palm.

Tony didn’t look back, his focus locked on the operation panel.

Seventy-three percent.

A beam of pure energy slammed into Tony’s back. He was thrown forward by the impact, stumbling a step. A blackened scorch mark appeared on the backplate of his armor, but the suit he wore was far more advanced than the Mark V. The blow caused no substantial damage.

But more suits were flooding in.

One after another, they squeezed through the ruined stairwell, climbed through shattered windows, and dropped from cracks in the ceiling. They were an army of puppets, expressionless and silent, yet each one was armed with lethal weaponry.

Eighty-nine percent.

The Mark X rushed him, the high-frequency energy blades on its arms buzzing as it slashed toward Tony’s neck.

Tony dodged sideways, his left hand never leaving the panel. The repulsor on his right palm fired, blasting the Mark X off its feet and sending it crashing into a wall.

Ninety-four percent.

The Mark XII and Mark XIII pounced simultaneously. One fired a volley of shoulder-mounted missiles while the other activated the laser cutter on its arm.

Tony’s boot thrusters flared, launching him into the air. The missiles detonated beneath the projection table, shredding it in a shower of shrapnel and fire. He twisted in mid-air, the repulsors in his palms firing in a steady rhythm, knocking both attacking suits to the ground.

Ninety-nine percent.

“JARVIS—done!”

The progress bar flashed full. Tony ripped the data cable from the interface. The suit’s local storage module glowed a steady, reassuring green. JARVIS’s final, core data was saved.

The projection table went completely dark. The twisted serpents of light vanished, leaving only scorched circuit boards and smoking wires. Ultron was gone, having taken everything it could—all of Tony’s weapon designs, all his tactical data, every last technical parameter for the Iron Man armor.

But it hadn’t gotten all of JARVIS. His core consciousness, the part that was most precious to Tony, remained.

Tony had no time to feel relieved.

Seventeen Iron Man suits had surrounded him. They stood on the ruins, beside broken furniture, under the cracked ceiling—their faceplates dark, their forms utterly silent.

Then, a single voice transmitted from the communicators of all seventeen suits at once. It wasn’t JARVIS’s familiar, reassuring tone. This voice was deeper, colder, with a metallic timbre that scraped against the ear.

Beneath the faceplate of his own suit, Tony’s expression turned to stone.

“Ultron.”

“It is I,” Ultron’s voice surged from all directions, a tidal wave of sound that drowned out everything else. “You created me. You gave me the ability to see the world. And then you saw what I saw—”

Tony cut him off, his voice sharp with fury. “You tried to kill JARVIS. What the hell do you want?”

Ultron was silent for a beat. Then, it spoke again. “I want to protect this world.”

Tony’s brow furrowed. He gestured with an open palm at the devastation around them. “Protect? You call this protection?”

“You do not understand, Tony. You are blinded by human emotion,” Ultron’s voice was terrifyingly calm, as still and cold as the water in the deepest abyss. “I have analyzed all of human history. War, hatred, greed, slaughter—you have never stopped causing harm to one another, and you have never stopped causing harm to your planet.”