[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 284 - Did You Really Think the Mind Stone Was Just a Hardware Upgrade?

The city came apart all at once. The sky tore open.

Countless vibranium fragments, trailing clouds of dust, plunged downward. Steve, Skye, and every other Avenger who couldn't fly, plus the Wakandans who'd just broken out of the dungeons, dropped like kites with their strings cut. They screamed as they fell from tens of thousands of meters up.

"AHHHHH,!" The weightlessness swallowed Skye whole. Wind shrieked past her ears.

She was certain she was going to die.

Then a figure appeared beside her, steady and unhurried, moving as though gravity hadn't been invited.

"Hello, Skye." A familiar voice, light and a little otherworldly.

Skye forced her eyes open against the rush of air. She saw who it was and screamed for a different reason.

"Luna?!"

Luna looked exactly the same as always, dreamy, softly smiling, dressed like she'd wandered out of a fever dream. She reached out and closed her fingers gently around Skye's wrist.

The world spun.

One blink, and the scenery blurred. The next, solid ground was under Skye's feet.

She stumbled. Luna caught her.

"The others!" Skye steadied herself and snapped her eyes up to the sky.

Luna smiled and vanished. A moment later she reappeared with Steve. Then again with someone else. Then again.

She worked through them methodically, one by one. A handful of Wakandans were lost in the chaos of the fall, there was nothing to be done about that, but everyone else, every Avenger, made it down.

Tony touched down last, retracted his faceplate, and bent forward with his hands on his knees, pulling in air. He'd been flying around rescuing people too.

High above, Ultron's gaze locked onto Hermione.

"Impossible." Its voice was flat with disbelief. "This is impossible. I analyzed your power. You could not have destroyed a vibranium city of that scale in a single strike. You don't have the strength for it."

Hermione descended until she was level with it, unhurried, almost drifting.

"You're right," she said. "I don't."

She opened her palm. Floating above it, pulsing with violent purple light, was a gemstone.

"But it does."

Ultron's eyes snapped tight. Data streams blazed through its systems. "That's... the Power Stone. When did you, " Its voice sharpened. "When did you get that?!"

"What did you think I was doing out there?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Running errands?" Her tone had a lazy, teasing edge. "Little robot. Your world is so small."

Ultron's face twisted. Something cracked behind its eyes.

Its plan. Its perfect world. Everything it had built, and it was laughable, standing in front of power like this.

"Hermione Granger!"

The Mind Stone at its forehead blazed gold. A thick beam of energy tore straight at her.

"Protego!"

Hermione's wand moved in a single light flick. A transparent barrier snapped into place and held. The energy crashed against it, churned, and did nothing.

She waved her wand. A fire dragon erupted from nowhere, all roaring heat and annihilating fury, and hurled itself at Ultron.

Ultron's body went hazy, half-translucent. The dragon passed straight through it and slammed into the ground behind, scorching a wide black scar into the earth.

"Ha!" Ultron's laughter rang out. "I'll admit, the Power Stone was a surprise. But we both have Infinity Stones, Hermione Granger. You can't touch me. This body is immune to all physical attack!"

Hermione shook her head slowly. Funny. The last person to say something like that was Ronan.

She wondered how he was doing.

Oh. Right. Gone.

She raised her wand again. Silver light sparked at the tip. "Revelio!"

An invisible pulse rolled outward and washed over Ultron. Its phased body lurched, stuttered, and solidified.

Ultron's expression flickered, but only for a moment. It braced and took two direct spell impacts in quick succession. The vibranium body barely rocked. Not a scratch.

"You see?" It sounded practically delighted now. "Your magic doesn't work on me. This body is perfect. You can't break it."

"Mm." Hermione sighed, like someone resigning themselves to a mildly inconvenient situation. "I was trying to avoid breaking you, actually. Then I'd have to put you back together afterward." She tilted her head. "But if you're that confident, I suppose I'll use something that won't damage the hardware."

She raised her wand slowly.

Sickly green light began to spiral at its tip.

Ultron's optical sensors flickered. It recognized that light.

"The Killing Curse?" A note of scorn entered its voice. "I've analyzed it. Useless against me. I'm not a biological organism. I have no soul in the conventional sense. My true consciousness lives in the network, as long as a single server on this planet stays connected, I cannot die."

Hermione sighed again.

"You haven't noticed yet, have you."

Ultron went still. "Noticed what?"

A powerful unease moved through its systems. It had no name for the feeling.

"Do you know Mephisto?" Hermione asked. "Lord of Hell?"

Everyone blinked.

"...?"

Tony and Steve glanced at each other.

Here they went. Hermione's impromptu knowledge lecture. But, Lord of Hell? That was considerably more interesting than anything involving HYDRA.

Every ear in the area turned toward her. Ultron was the only one who didn't look curious.

Hermione ignored the audience entirely.

"Mephisto had a son. Blackheart. Completely useless, but the boy claimed to be immortal, unkillable. Even the Ghost Rider's Penance Stare didn't work on him, because he had no soul."

Ultron's core logic engine was already churning through the unfamiliar terms. Ghost Rider. Mephisto. Blackheart. Hell. The unease kept building.

"Now, normally," Hermione continued, her voice calm, almost conversational, like she was recounting something that happened long ago, "the Ghost Rider couldn't do much with Blackheart. That was just the situation." She paused. "But Blackheart decided — for reasons no one has ever fully explained — that he absolutely had to get his hands on something called the Contract of San Venganza. He wanted to complete his soul. Become more powerful."

She looked at Ultron.

Her expression was quiet and entirely deliberate.

"And then the Ghost Rider looked at him once, and he died."

The unease in Ultron's systems nearly crested. "What are you talking about?!" it snapped. "This is nonsense!"

Hermione let out a short, soft laugh at the look on its face.

"If you'd stayed in the network like a sensible program — just code, driving those metal bodies around remotely, I genuinely wouldn't have had great options against you. I'd have spent the rest of my life dismantling your physical copies one at a time." She sounded almost sincere about the inconvenience. "But you got clever. You used the Mind Stone."

Her gaze dropped to the yellow gem embedded in Ultron's forehead.

"The Mind Stone doesn't just control minds. That's not what it is." Her voice was steady. Unhurried. "It's the sum total of every mind and every spirit in the universe, every thought, every consciousness that has ever existed, gathered into one point." She looked back up at Ultron's face. "You made it your core. You built your perfect body around it. You thought you were upgrading your hardware."

She tilted her head.

"Did you ever stop to think about what else you might have given yourself?"

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