Ultron Offensive

"There's only one path to peace. Their extinction."

- Ultron

The War against Ultron was a series of attacks executed by the rogue artificial intelligence, Ultron, in a quest to bring about the genocide of humanity. His greatest opposition was by the Avengers, and the repetitive confrontations between the two led to various negative repercussions against the team. The conflict culminated in a wide-scale destructive battle in the Eastern European country of Sokovia, where the Avengers, aided by new members and allied forces from the former S.H.I.E.L.D. agency, defeated Ultron.

Prelude
"Consequences are upon us. Men made of metal will tear our cities apart, and the world will be changed forever."

- Raina to Jiaying

By the year 2015, both Phil Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers had long been conflicting with the terrorist group HYDRA in an attempt to bring them down. The actions of both groups resulted in the deaths of several significant HYDRA figureheads. In their latest assault, S.H.I.E.L.D. rescued Deathlok and Lincoln Campbell from the HYDRA facility in Antarctica. From records recovered from the raid, the agency was able to track down the location of the long sought-after scepter that was wielded by the rogue Asgardian Loki during the War for Earth. The scepter was being held by the last two HYDRA figureheads, Wolfgang von Strucker and List, in a facility in Sokovia, where the two terrorists were using its energy for various experiments that spawned enhanced weaponry, research in artificial intelligence, and two superpowered siblings, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. With this information, Coulson transmitted the scepter's location to Maria Hill; the Avengers were subsequently sent in as the retrieval team.

Right as Coulson sent the coordinates, the clairvoyant Inhuman Raina experienced a vision from the Inhuman settlement of Afterlife. She saw the scepter being meddled with by Tony Stark, and armies of "metal men" ravaging Earth's cities and causing horrific levels of carnage. She related details of this vision to Jiaying, the leader of the Inhumans in Afterlife.

The Avengers arrived in Sokovia, where they battled their way through dozens of HYDRA forces, killing List, apprehending Strucker, and briefly encountering the Maximoffs, who used their powers to evade capture. Iron Man located the scepter, and Wanda, after scanning Stark's mind, discovered his deep-seated fear of failure and leading the Earth to destruction. Possessing her own resentment towards Stark for his unwitting role in her parents' deaths, Wanda allowed him to make off with the scepter, believing that his work with it will lead to his own self-destruction. The Avengers brought the scepter to Avengers Tower in New York City, where Stark and Bruce Banner discovered coding for artificial intelligence grafted into the scepter; Stark, despite Banner's skepticism, saw this as a perfect opportunity to kickstart the Ultron Program. The Ultron Program was a peacekeeping idea formulated by Stark as a means of replacing the Avengers with an AI operated defense grid. After three days of work, Stark and Banner were intially unable to spawn the AI they required, and temporarily left the project alone to attend a party celebrating HYDRA's defeat. Moments after they left, the AI, Ultron, suddenly activated. It reacted aggressively towards J.A.R.V.I.S. when the friendly AI tried to calm it, attacking him and forcing J.A.R.V.I.S. to hide himself in the internet. Assembling a new body from broken pieces of Stark's Iron Legion drones, Ultron, now fully sentient, formulated in seconds a solution to ending global conflict: the complete annihilation of all mankind.

The Madness Begins
"I'm ready. I'm on a mission." "What mission?" "Peace of our time."

- Ultron and Black Widow

As the Avengers were hosting a party celebrating their victory over HYDRA and retrieval of the scepter with many of their friends attending, including James Rhodes and Sam Wilson. When the party came to an end, Ultron limped into the room. Initially believing him to be a malfunctioning suit, Tony tried to contact J.A.R.V.I.S., only for Ultron to reveal his identity by replaying a phrase Stark had said shortly before. As the others began to prepare for a fight, Ultron told them he was on a mission to create peace, and suddenly turned the Iron Legion against the superheroes. After a long and lengthy fight in which Rhodes was injured and a drone escaped with a scepter, the Avengers finally destroyed all the robots. Ultron proceeded to mock the Avengers, telling them that if humanity was to remain the same and not evolve, there would never be peace. He came to a conclusion that the only way peace could happen was that the Avengers would have to be destroyed. Thor then proceeded to destroy the body Ultron was using, but he downloaded himself into the robots back at the abandoned HYDRA base in Sokovia and began to rebuild himself and his new army.

Fragmentation
"You and I can hurt them. But you, you can tear them apart. From the inside."

- Ultron to Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch

Aftermath
With Ultron's defeat, Hawkeye returns to his wife and children, where he name his newborn child Nathaniel Pietro Barton in honor of the fallen Avenger Pietro Maximoff. Hulk fled in the Quinjet, Thor returned to Asgard to learn more about the Infinity Stones which he believed have manipulated recent events, and Tony Stark retired from the team, leaving Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff as the only original active Avengers.

With the establishment of a New Avengers Facility and under supervision of Nick Fury, the duo prepares to train new recruits: Sam Wilson, James Rhodes, Wanda Maximoff and Vision.