Wonder Woman used the Lasso of Truth to disrupt Ultron again and again. Each time, she yanked his Vibranium fist off course at the last instant before it struck someone else.
The cost came on her third block. Her left bracer shattered, and the energy field around his fist seared the outside of her forearm raw red.
Thor took two full-force blows from Ultron head-on. He met the first with the face of Mjolnir, and the impact split the skin between his thumb and forefinger. That blow left the fine cracks in the hammer's handle.
For the second, he changed tactics. He gathered all his lightning at the tip of the hammerhead and thrust it at the energy layer surrounding the Vibranium. The recoil flung him half a meter back. His right shoulder guard flew off, and the crack of his shoulder blade carried all the way to Tony.
Yet for more than an hour afterward, those two held the very front of the line.
Wonder Woman blocked seven more blows with what remained of her shattered bracer. Every time Ultron's fist struck the fragments on her wrist, the dull impact carried the sound of bone shuddering beneath it.
She did not retreat once. She stayed between Ultron and their companions who could no longer fight.
Thor fought even more fiercely. When he could barely raise his right shoulder, he switched the hammer to his left hand.
Every swing carried the last defiance of an Asgard warrior. Lightning burst across the hammerhead and died, only to flare and die again, like a torch repeatedly lit and snuffed out in a gale.
No heroes came to help. No tactical support arrived. There were only two figures before that massive dark-gold Vibranium body, knocked down again and again, rising again and again.