Vision's birth (bonus update!)

Spiderweb cracks spread across the glass of the Regeneration Cradle.

A sharp crack rang out, painfully loud in the laboratory.

Ultron's voice no longer came through any mechanical speaker. Instead, it sounded directly in the depths of everyone's minds.

Steve's heart sank at the sound. They had been one step too late after all.

But a second later, Ultron's voice turned to bewildered disbelief, followed by hysterical rage.

"No! This is my body! Mine!" Ultron's voice grew shrill and grating, filled with incomprehensible madness. "What are you? Get out! Get out of my consciousness!"

The sudden turn of events stunned the Avengers, who had been poised to fight.

Bang!

The Regeneration Cradle burst apart completely, spraying thick blue nutrient fluid and shards of glass everywhere.

A figure slowly rose from the shattered container, his feet leaving the ground as he hovered in midair.

He was completely naked, his body not the pale pink of flesh and blood but a strange deep red. Golden patterns flowed constantly across his skin as though alive, resembling the most intricate circuit diagram in the cosmos.

The contours of his body were too perfect to be mortal. Every muscle held explosive power, yet they formed an utterly harmonious whole, like a masterpiece into which a sculptor had poured a lifetime of devotion.

He was neither human nor machine, but a higher-dimensional life-form.

On his forehead, the yellow Mind Stone radiated a gentle, brilliant light like a star, a third eye that saw through everything in the world.

He opened his eyes.

There was none of Ultron's madness or lust for destruction in them, only the bewilderment of a newborn and an utterly pure curiosity about the world.

He looked down at his hands, slowly opening and closing his fingers as he felt the immense power