Boom!
The barrel thundered; the glowing plasma bolts struck Ultron directly.
Eleven shots in total — plasma at over 2,000°C — easily pierced its casing. The high-temperature gas continued to eat at the tal shell, white smoke billowed up and buried Ultron's silhouette completely.
But it did not fall.
"Impressive," Ultron said, ungrudging in its praise.
The high-temperature plasma kept dissolving tal for a while; black smoke still poured from its fra, its head obscured. From what tal could be glimpsed through the smoke, the damage was far less than Leo had expected.
The reason: a shield had protruded from Ultron's chest — a round shield painted with the Union Jack!
"That's my shield!" Captain Carter cried, clutching her bleeding arm.
The paint on the round shield had liquefied under the heat, pignts vaporized and ran down, and in the end the drips and stains just happened to form a chaotic, skull-like pattern.
Clang.
tallic legs found purchase. Half of Ultron's head erged from the black smoke; one hand caught the molten tal that stread from its face.
"Yes, that's your shield," it said. "Thank you for the 67-year courier delivery."
At the sa ti, Leo's robot strode out of the cave, its own barrel spitting the sa exaggerated smoke—
Now it made sense. Ultron had been born out of the battle a few weeks earlier, when the Iron Soldiers had had their AI constraints fully removed, producing an unpredictable ergent intelligence.
Leo knew this kind of thing could happen: in the cyberpunk world, many AIs are born in unrestrained working environnts.
No wonder they couldn't find the shield before — Ultron had stolen it.
Ultron pointed at the Atlas troopers around them. Frank had just dragged himself from the rubble; one leg was a compound fracture with white bone protruding through skin.
The rest of the team were in similar bad shape.
Under Ultron's command, the remaining sixteen Iron Soldiers turned their repulsion cannons toward the struggling troopers. Instantly, nobody moved foolishly any more.
Ultron wanted to show off.
Leo watched the robot quietly.
As a dangerously critical entity, Ultron's "personality" had a clear flaw: when it judged a situation under control it liked to strut and spout rhetoric.
But shields are not omnipotent; it seed Ultron's little head had not learned enough.
Leo needed to cool his barrel and wait for the weapon's side effects to take hold, so he simply stopped at the cave mouth.
Ultron raised an arm and pointed at Leo.
"Interesting," it said. "You claim publicly you are not a warmonger, yet you have made every preparation for war: augnted prosthetics, military exoskeletons, nuclear energy, and an AI like ."
Ultron pointed for about two seconds — maybe it expected the Little Octopus to greet it, but nothing happened.
So it retracted its arm and took a few steps forward. "Fine. Regardless, the fact that the biggest 'peace faction' in Arica possesses a lot of military tech and has deployed it demonstrates one thing."
Ultron advanced step by step. Two Iron Soldiers stepped forward, knelt on either side of the path, and opened all safety locks.
It casually tore parts from those two Iron Soldiers, patching the wounds caused by the plasma cannon, then plunged a hand into an Iron Soldier's fuel reservoir—
"Ah — concentrated high-energy oil! This stuff! Fantastic! I can make myself even stronger!"
Leo couldn't help but find it amusing: had Ultron's logic fried? No matter how powerful fossil fuels are, nuclear energy was right there — and it still wanted oil?
Maybe Tony hadn't given it access to a reactor, so its tastes hadn't evolved.
Ultron, like an addict, drained the fuel from two Iron Soldiers. Sothing about ingesting that "high-energy concentrated oil" changed it: its chest began to glow like a reactor as the oil flowed in.
It stepped in front of Leo and leveled its repulsion cannon at the robot's head.
"With this fuel, after I drive you off this land, I can begin my plan: a plan to eliminate war."
Buzzz—
The repulsor cannon gathered energy, giving off a faint hum.
Leo locked his gaze on Ultron's pipelines. On its tal shell, especially around the edges of the wounds left by the plasma cannon, the tal had undergone subtle, nearly invisible changes.
As the cannon's operating temperature rose again, the irradiated tal at Ultron's "wounds" slightly hardened and shifted inward—
"Goodbye!"
Crackle!
Suddenly, massive electrical arcs erupted from Ultron's head!
This was the mont Leo had been waiting for: radiation energy had built up in the electronic components, causing voltage offsets and current leakage in the semiconductors!
And with Ultron's improvised battlefield modifications, those irradiated tals once again spat out bursts of high-energy radioactive particles, striking the electronic components directly and triggering single-event upsets—
The two effects combined into an electrical pulse before Ultron could even react!
The barrel had cooled. Leo raised it again:
"You talk too much—ti to act!"
"Sh*t—"
Bang!
Ultron's head was blasted apart, and unexpectedly, the entire Ultron network stuttered!
In that instant of daze, Captain Carter burst into motion, lunging straight for the shield!
Within a single second, five plasma blasts struck Iron Soldiers. Ultron snapped back, and saw Leo reaching out a massive hand toward him!
It was obvious—Leo was launching an invasion attempt!
To be honest, as an AI, Leo couldn't win against Ultron in a one-on-one direct cyber duel—but Leo had an AI too! One with far more experience!
The Little Octopus might not be able to crush Ultron instantly due to distance and bandwidth limits, but it could absolutely pin Ultron here and infiltrate its servers!
[Little Octopus: Boss, you guessed right—it really is the Sixth Fleet detachnt in Somalia.]
[Little Octopus: All done. The stationed officers are probably dumbfounded right now.]
Near an unnad harbor by Somalia's Galkayo port, the Wakandan coast patrol spotted sothing absurd—
The stolen Arican warship!
Onboard, Prince T'Challa swallowed hard. He hadn't expected it—turns out the Aricans weren't lying about "losing a warship." Their ship really had been stolen by Somalis!
And the signal Somalia had used to tip them off had co from right here!
[T'Challa: Leo? You were right, the warship really is here.]
[Leo: Excellent. I recall that vessel's in fine condition. I'll grab you an instruction manual from the Departnt of Defense.]
[T'Challa: Huh??]
[Leo: I've already taken control of the Sixth Fleet's ships at Galkayo. Whatever you do, they won't know.]
[Leo: Now, you have two choices. First, return the vessel to the Aricans—but they won't thank you. They'll sar you instead.]
[Leo: Second, right now—establish the African Union Navy's First Fleet. Announce that the Aricans' Sixth Fleet detachnt has violated Somali sovereignty—]
[Leo: Attack their ships, capture their officers, and ship both the parts and the people back together.]
[T'Challa: WHAT??]
T'Challa's head buzzed, full of question marks—but Leo wasn't done:
[Leo: Oh, and by the way—there's no more Somali Transitional Governnt. Its officials are now aboard the African Union's warships.]
[T'Challa: WHAT???]
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