The Criminal Stark

"Hulk is the strongest Avengers, but now he has failed, utterly powerless against that man!"

"The battle that destroyed half of New York happened a day ago," Tony Stark said to his comrades inside Avengers Tower.

He looked haggard, his eyes bloodshot from excessive drinking, but his hand holding the glass remained steady. "We failed, the Avengers failed—or rather, this superhero group did nothing but serve as a target."

"Stark!" Captain America stopped Tony Stark from continuing. Having experienced war, he knew that what was needed now was to boost morale, not to reopen old wounds.

"Oh, Captain, the repelling of the Chitauri invasion was done by S.H.I.E.L.D..'s Helicarrier. They rammed right through the alien mothership." Tony Stark laughed sarcastically. "We were arguing about S.H.I.E.L.D.. developing energy weapons, but who knew they'd gone so far ahead, developing space weapons. I don't even understand the principles behind them."

Upon hearing this, Captain America said, "They are still human, still on our side... aren't they?"

Tony Stark casually waved his hand, and the indoor projection system detected his movement, projecting a battle scene—a scene recorded by the Iron Man suit —showing Doc Green fighting against the Blonde Sister.

"Humans? You actually say they're still human!" Perhaps under the influence of alcohol, Tony Stark became somewhat hysterical. "Do you know how many people in New York were affected while they were fighting? Although there's only a rough number, it's still as many as 3.5 million, and that's just the casualties. In human history, only two nuclear weapons have actually been used in war, causing less than a million direct casualties. Their threat is far more terrifying than nuclear weapons."

As he spoke, Stark lifted his shirt and pointed to the Arc Reactor on his chest with his finger. "My original heart has long since disappeared. Now, an artificial heart beats in my chest, but seeing this number still breaks my heart. That's three and a half million lives!"

"If you want to get your original heart back, I can help you. But, Mr. Stark, I don't know if you're just pretending to be drunk or drowning your sorrows, so please just say what's on your mind."

Wei Xiuming tapped the table with his finger, reminding Tony Stark to reveal his true intentions— Stark had picked up some bad habits from spending so much time dealing with politicians recently.

"Dr. Clark, when did you arrive?" Wei Xiuming's sudden appearance startled some people. Captain America suddenly jumped up, ready for battle, but relaxed after seeing who it was.

"When Tony Stark announced those casualty figures... Bruce Banner's surgery was already complete. He was just quite exhausted, but with proper rest, he'll recover," Wei Xiuming said.

Although his solo film flopped and due to copyright deals, Hulk could only appear as a supporting character in other people's movies, he was still a well-known figure, and Bruce Banner wouldn't die so easily.

"Mr. Stark, are you planning to create a super weapon to replace the Avengers in maintaining world peace?" Wei Xiuming continued banging on the table, like a judge striking a gavel to maintain order.

Tony Stark, unfazed that his "unconventional behavior" had been exposed, said, "Yes, Ultron —an unprecedentedly powerful artificial intelligence, responsible for monitoring crime, upgrading weapons... I've completed its basic framework. All it needs is a core template of someone's personality, and with Bruce's help, Ultron can be born."

"Ultron is a massive undertaking; I couldn't have completed it alone." Then Tony Stark looked at the other members of the Avengers: "I need your support... Aren't we a team?"

Tony Stark has always been wary of artificial intelligence. For example, his J.A.R.V.I.S. —the most advanced AI-assisted system on Earth—could have gone even further, but he added a constraint on J.A.R.V.I.S., limiting its self-learning mechanism, precisely to prevent it from becoming an evil villain in the movies.

But Ultron is different; it was a fleeting flash of inspiration in Stark's mind—artificial intelligence has no emotions, but what if it were given a personality?

Although Tony Stark harbors considerable prejudice against Captain America, he must admit that in terms of personal morality, Captain America is almost a saint. If his personality were infused into Ultron's core, he could confidently complete this powerful weapon.

"Ultron ... thank you for your unsolicited confession." Upon hearing this, Wei Xiuming didn't say anything more, but clapped his hands.

While everyone was still confused, Black Eggplant walked in, followed by a team of heavily armed Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., including Billy Russo and Hammerhead Harlow, who stood guard over Nick Fury like two powerful bodyguards.

"Chief."

Upon seeing Nick Fury, Natasha, whose work file was temporarily on loan to the Avengers, stood up and greeted him. Black Eggplant gestured to her, then walked over to Tony Stark and, before the young man could speak, said, "Tony Stark, on behalf of the World Security Council, I hereby arrest you for crimes against humanity and endangering public safety."

After giving the instructions, Joseph Harlow took out a pair of handcuffs, cuffed Tony Stark's hands behind his back, and then grabbed his shoulders and arms to lift him off his seat.

"I won't say anything until the lawyer arrives!"

Tony Stark said something habitually, then suddenly remembered that he was now in Avengers Tower, not being pulled over by the police for speeding after drinking.

"Bald One-Eyed Man, what exactly did I do?"

Tony Stark, already used to Nick Fury's form of address, said with a dark expression, "You've admitted that Ultron, the artificial intelligence that once brought human civilization to the brink of extinction, was born from you."

"J.A.R.V.I.S.... project Ultron's structure."

The young master panicked and asked J.A.R.V.I.S. to demonstrate his work, but J.A.R.V.I.S.'s reply sent chills down his spine, "I'm sorry, sir, there is no record of the word 'Ultron' in the database."

"Oh, no!"

Tony Stark cried out in pain. He had a rough idea of what had happened—unbeknownst to him, Ultron's program had self-corrected, spread across the internet, and deleted everything about it from Stark Industries' central servers, which was why J.A.R.V.I.S. hadn't notified him of the anomaly.

From the very beginning, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Ultron had different intentions; the fully-fledged Ultron could easily do all that to J.A.R.V.I.S..

"The robotics lab, the advanced weapons lab, the jet propulsion lab, the materials lab, the artificial intelligence lab... and even the nuclear launch base—it has intrusion records for all of them." Nick Fury took out an USB Drive and placed it on the table; the intelligent system immediately read the data inside.

Those were intrusion records; some powerful programmer had forcibly breached the firewalls of those places and accessed their databases. The initial intrusions seemed very rudimentary, leaving many obvious traces, but the later intrusion techniques amazed Tony Stark, and his heart jumped into his throat.

This indicates that Ultron is maturing rapidly, growing to a point where even his creator cannot miraculously change him, which is not a good thing, especially when Ultron displays malice towards humanity.

"I have no excuses; this was my mistake."

After facing reality, Tony Stark said with great pain, "Just like Black Eggplant said, because of what he did, humanity was once on the verge of extinction."

Captain America was completely bewildered. Although his common sense was sufficient for modern life, his knowledge was stuck seventy years in the past. He asked Natasha in a low voice, puzzled, "What happened?"

Black Widow was momentarily speechless, unsure how to explain it clearly to Captain America. The difference in understanding was akin to explaining to Western women how normal it is to retain one's original surname after marriage without having to change it to one's husband's.

"I need help." After a minute of looking haggard because of Ultron, Tony Stark's fighting spirit ignited again. "I created Ultron, so I should also destroy him!"

Then he looked at Wei Xiuming, who seemed indifferent. "Dr. Clark, your expertise in artificial intelligence is the best I've ever seen. With your help, we can definitely wipe out Ultron completely."

"The suggestion is good, but I refuse." Wei Xiuming shook his head and said, "Ultron is essentially a program. The entire internet on Earth is its domain. It can hide in any piece of data. Even if you destroy one of its core data, it may have already made hundreds or thousands of backups of itself. As long as there is a trace left, you can never completely defeat it."

"The best way to destroy Ultron is to completely shut down the existing internet and send humanity back to the electrical age."

After saying that, Wei Xiuming took off his gas mask, picked up Tony Stark's treasured bottle of liquor and chug it down—after tasting it, he found that he didn't like the flavor and that beer was better.

His behavior was interpreted by others as him feeling overwhelmed by the problem and drowning his sorrows in alcohol.

"If you want to salvage the situation, I can introduce you to someone— Hank Pym, the founder of Pym Technologies. He was ousted from the company by his daughter because of his volatile personal style and is now unemployed with plenty of time to spare. Ultron grew rapidly precisely after hacking into Pym Technologies' database, so he should know exactly what Ultron gained."

Tony Stark was then transported to a special prison on the Helicarrier —to preserve Iron Man as the face of the Avengers, he was escorted directly by Quinjet.

This was unavoidable; all countries were invaded by Ultron, and a large amount of advanced technology was leaked. The World Security Council directly pressured Nick Fury to find the culprit— Tony Stark was the number one person on his <Avengers Initiative> list, personally recommended by him, the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.., so he would definitely be implicated if anything went wrong.

"As you know, Hank Pym was a veteran of S.H.I.E.L.D.. and a longtime friend of Howard Stark. However, S.H.I.E.L.D.. once tried to bypass him to replicate the formula for the Pym Particles, and there was even an incident where a sample of the Pym Particles was lost. Since then, Hank Pym has left S.H.I.E.L.D.. and severed his friendship with Howard Stark. Whether it's S.H.I.E.L.D.. or Tony Stark, they can't get anything out of him."

Nick Fury looked at Wei Xiuming, wanting to know his thoughts. "Why did you do this?"

"In my time, Ultron, the most troublesome being in the Avengers, was created by Hank Pym. He must know something," Wei Xiuming said.

"How did you deal with Ultron in your time?" Nick Fury said. "You mean that rampaging AI? You must have a way."

Seeing Nick Fury's confident demeanor, as if he were the one who had everything under control.

Wei Xiuming shook his head. "Originally, there was a way—using the power of the Mind Stone, we could expel Ultron from the data network, put him in a storage device, and then physically destroy that storage device."

But now the Mind Stone is in SHOCKER's hands.

"Fuck you," Nick Fury cursed. Was the great responsibility of saving humanity really going to fall on the shoulders of this evil organization, SHOCKER?

But even if they wanted to swallow their pride and ask SHOCKER for help, they couldn't find anyone. SHOCKER always took the initiative to appear and sell his goods, but no one ever approached them.

Not only S.H.I.E.L.D.., but even Conglomerate B, another evil organization, couldn't do anything about it.

"Of course, the Mind Stone isn't the only option." After much deliberation, Wei Xiuming finally said, "The Bugster Boon-type virus reality and the data world—find it, then spread it through the media, bridging the gap between the real world and the data network, creating a massive game world where Ultron will become a conquerable entity."

"We need to play the role of the player, to defeat a boss named Ultron and save the world from him. But if the game fails, the real world will be destroyed, becoming food for Ultron to grow stronger."

Although Wei Xiuming created many things that could be described as miracles, such as his outdated Helicarrier crashing into the Chitauri mothership, such things seem impossible—they don't seem scientific at all.

"What we need is the power of one of the Infinity Stones, the Reality Stone. Only it has the power to do this!"