A/N: Thought it might be wise to give myself a project to work on in between chapter for 'The Key', and I love myself a bit of Ultron. There's a couple of fics out there that use the 'Female Mechanic' route (all of which I thoroughly enjoy reading) but I wanted to try something a little different without stretching the boundaries of credulity too far. Obviously this vaguely humorous first-person POV fic isn't nearly as serious as The Key, but I really needed the practice in both lighthearted writing and first-person, so here you go! Since I'm dividing my time between the two fics the update speed will depend on demand via review. If this ends up being the more popular piece I might shift it to top priority, but I'll see how it goes, first. Enjoy!

Sokovia had never been a particularly wealthy place, the people knew that if an opportunity arose, any opportunity, you had to take it. Even when they came bundled up in unimaginable trauma. It had been three years since I had seen my homeland, and when I finally did it was on breaking news, the story covered in Mandarin.

When I had left to study university in South-East China I had promised myself I would never look back, that I deserved to get the hell out of there. I had never meant to feel guilty for deciding to be independent, but seeing your home floating above the Earth in some sort of convoluted extermination plot, and spending hours wondering if your family was alive or dead will play cat-and-mouse with your emotions like few other things can.

To be perfectly honest, when the reports had first started trending, talking about highly intelligent androids swarming my city I had immediately thought my father to be at fault. Who else would pick such an obscure little place for something like that? But no, just like everything else, it wasn't long before the Stark name became tacked onto that, too. I was starting to think he did it for attention. On my end, though, while Stark was probably cleaning up the mess he made, I was arguing on the phone in Mandarin for a plane flight, one they couldn't give me, because you'd have to be a fool to fly into a war zone like Sokovia.

So, after being stuck there for so long and struggling to get out, I was now stuck in another country, trying to get back in. For several hours I sat on the floor, back against the wall, phone in my hand and eyes on the small box television, waiting for word to come.

Eventually it did, but it was so far from what I had wanted to hear that I would have probably preferred nothing at all. My father called, and he was still the same as always. He was fine, of course. He even got a good look around at the inside of SHEILD people movers they used to get them off the 'island' before it was destroyed. In fact, he was giving me such a detailed description of the transport that it took me interrupting his spiel three times before he told me if my brother was alive. Which he was. Pa then put Aleks on the phone, to receive much the same excited babble from him. The robots, they said, were incredible. Murderous and evil, of course, but so well designed!

In the end, I cut them off with a goodbye sharper than they probably deserved after going through what they did, but had they cared at all about what I had gone through, away from the action?

For two weeks I went to class, and brooded, and slept, and repeated. I didn't answer the phone, or watch the news. Of course, I was on the internet so much that there wasn't anything on there that I wasn't already aware of. Two weeks I sulked before I could pull myself out of it, and do what needed to be done.

Most of the nearest airports had been designated specifically for relief efforts in the wake of the destruction, and even then they weren't letting just anyone into the ones left open. I was able to purchase a ticket, mainly due to my passport and family from the area, but the security hurdles I had to go through were rather ridiculous. Here I had though that when I eventually took time off from class I would be going on holiday. Goodness only knew that spending extended amounts of time with my family was more like a chore, but someone had to make sure that they were really okay, had been eating and sleeping. They would have lost the house, obviously, as it was in the half of the city that went for a ride. Where were they even staying? They were probably too scatterbrained to apply for whatever refugee housing that had been set up.

But that was family, right? It didn't really matter how independent you worked to be, because in the end it would be them needing you, and you would do it because even though sometimes you didn't like them, you still loved them.

On the flight over, I managed to again be honest with myself; part of me, a very strange, twisted part of me that I had spent the better part of my adult life trying to ignore, was jealous of them. I had packed my bags and moved to one of the most interesting places on Earth, and they were still the ones having the adventures. That part tended to wish that I had thrown caution to the wind years ago to join the family trade of mechanics and engineering and general scifi enthusiasm, but someone had to be the practical one, and I had drawn the short straw, after Ma had passed.

Thankfully the flight wasn't as long as it could have been, China being a not-too-distant neighbor, and I wasn't left alone with my nervous energy for too long. Then it was just a two hour taxi ride from the next city over, during which I used that energy to idly chatter at my driver just to stay sane, and shake the rust off my mother tongue. It was strange the frequency with which the odd Chinese or English word of phrase wanted to sneak into what I was saying. All of a sudden three years was feeling longer than it had before. And then I saw her; my home.

Or, rather, half of it.

The sight of the destruction up close brought more than one tear to my eyes. I must have looked fairly awful by the end of it, because when the taxi dropped me off in the town square the driver gave me a pitying look before taking my money and driving off. Maybe if I had kicked it up a notch I could have gotten my ride for free. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess. Brushing it off, I took out my phone and dialed my father's mobile number. It rang for so long I though he wouldn't pick up, but on what had to be the last ring there was a click. "Atyets? Pa is that you?"

"Katja! This is not your number. Who's phone are you using?" came my father's rough and expressive voice, and already I was heaving a sigh.

"Atyets, this is my Sokovian sim card. I did leave a message a couple days ago that I was coming to see you. Did you get it?" My free hand pinched at the bridge of my nose. Of course this would be the one time they did not check their emails.

"You are in Sokovia? Why didn't you let me know you were coming home?" he demanded, aghast, and totally oblivious to most things I said, as usual.

"Never mind, Pa. Where are you staying?" I asked, hoping he had a conclusive answer to give me, "Right now I am just standing on the side of the street with my suitcases."

There was a pause and a quiet shuffle of something or other, with some muffled whispering on the other side. My guess was the receiver had been covered, which irritated me. What exactly was going on over there, or didn't I want to know? Eventually his voice returned, "Oh, it is easy place to find. Near the crater."

"Near the crater? Pa, what are you doing over there? It's probably dangerous!"

"Do not worry yourself, sis," my brother chimed in, indicating that I was now on speaker phone, "it is perfectly safe here."

"Aleks, asking me not to worry about you is like telling the Earth to stop turning." I took a deep breath, and closed my eyes for a moment to gather myself. "You know what, it's fine, just tell me how to get there."

A twenty minute inner-city taxi ride later and I was in the general area, at least. Or I hoped so, they had been so vague on the phone. So again I stood on the sidewalk, clutching the handle to my luggage, scanning the area for any signs of my family, my anxiety growing every second. This part of town had been more affected than where I had gotten out first, the buildings cracked from sudden seismic activity and rubble littering the ground. I wish I was shocked to know they were living in such a place, but honestly it was just so typical.

"Hey, sis!"

I whirled around at the call and familiar voice, to see the even more familiar face, and felt the grin stretch my cheeks despite myself. "I was beginning to think you had given me bogus directions, 'Leksy," I joked as he jogged over and wrapped me in a bear hug. I didn't want to admit how comforting it was either. "I see you haven't been shaving as often as I'd like."

He ran a hand over the three day growth and smirked, "Well, the ladies seem to like it just fine."

I rolled my eyes and swatted at his arm. "Honestly, if any girl is crazy enough to come near you I will personally see to it that she knows exactly what she's herself getting into." He just laughed my jab off, though it seemed to me that he could afford to. Three years I had seen nothing but the occasional crappy photograph, but it was clear now that my baby brother was growing up.

"Come on, Katja, we have something waiting for you at home," he said, grabbing my suitcase in one hand and my hand in his other, and pulling us both in the direction he came from.

That was suspicious. "What do you mean you have something for me? Is it a good something or a bad something?" It seemed almost a normal thing to do. Something must have been up.

"It is a very good something," he assured me, his dark curls bobbing against his forehead as he nodded. This, of course, meant that the whatever-it-was had to be very bad. I swallowed, mentally preparing myself for whatever would come next.

The route I was lead through was long and winding, passing through small alleys and gaps between buildings, and at one point I accidentally stepped in a puddle of I-didn't-want-to-know-what, but eventually we came to a building that Aleks came to a stop in front of. He released my hand and gestured grandly to it, announcing, "Welcome home!" before taking my suitcase with him through the front door as I stood there blinking.

It was an old auto-repair shed. Honestly, that wasn't too far from what I had grown up in, but there were so many questions I had, Who's property was it? How did they get permission to live here? Where exactly were they living in there? From what I could see, the building consisted of a large garage, to which the doors were closed, and the small attached office and waiting room, where my brother had disappeared into. Of course I was unimpressed.

But, I took a deep breath and let out an even deeper sigh, steeled myself, and walked up the couple of stairs to the door, pushing it open. "Hello Pa, I made it," I called out as I entered, though it would have been obvious with Aleks bringing my suitcase in. I had expected to get another too-tight hug, but the room was empty, bar the mattress on the tacky linoleum flooring, my yellow suitcase left against the wall, and the table with the half-finished mug of black coffee my Pa was so fond of. "Atyets? Where are you guys?" Making my way slowly towards the only other door, the one that must lead out to the workshop, I felt my anxiety spike again. Why hadn't they been there to welcome me? And why hadn't they answered when I yelled?

I tried the handle, and it wasn't locked, so I told myself I was being silly and opened the door, peering around it into the large space. There was Aleks, looking nervous, beside the slightly overweight and much too hairy form of my father, who spun around to face me as I stepped over the threshold. If I was worried and suspicious before, now I was doubly so. "Okay guys, you better tell me what's going on, right now."

"Allow me," interrupted a deep male voice I had never heard in my life. I turned so quickly to my left to see the speaker that I'm sure I gave myself whiplash, but that was nothing compared to the fright I got when my eyes met glowing red optics set in a worn metal head. My gaze drifted downwards as I took a step back; machined neck, shoulders and torso, exposed wires everywhere, connected to hips and- I stopped myself there, not wanting to embarrass myself further, looking back into what must have served it for eyes. Though the broken android's face was solid, amusement was clearly conveyed in his metallic chuckle, "So this is your darling daughter, Feliks. And here I had pictured her to be more... surly. Get her looks from her mother's side, does she?"

Swallowing thickly, I held up a finger to pause the Ultron-bot, for what else could it be, turned around, and sent a vicious glare to the sheepish forms of my brother and father. Just when I thought they could hardly be any more troublesome.

A/N: I would like to thank my crazy-ass relatives and the three weeks I just spent clearing out their hoarding for the inspiration for this story. I love you, but your habits drive me 'round the bend :)

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