Chapter 2Summary:In which Jarvis and Hack have a playdate, Daisy has an existential crisis, and Clint is unhealthily attached to his bow.
Notes:Minor warning for suspected (but not actual) child abuse.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter TextGiven that she knew two of the best spies in the world were looking for Quake, Daisy probably should have given patrolling a miss that night, but she didn't. She had good logical reasons for this that she gave to Hack when her AI pointed out this was a very bad idea, which were that crime wasn't going to stop just because it was inconvenient for Daisy to patrol and suddenly vanishing would cast suspicions on Quake's connection to Skyenet. This is not the main reason she goes out to patrol though. The main reason is that she's never been particularly good at doing the sensible thing when she wants to do something else. Case in point, becoming an internationally hunted hacker.
She is sensible enough to patrol somewhere different from where she patrolled last, and stopped six bike thefts and a mugging, rescued a cat from a tree, stopped another bike theft, and then jumped out of her skin when a voice said behind her "You know that guy's just going to steal a bike somewhere else right?"
Daisy whirled round, hands automatically coming up in defence, but there was nobody behind her. She knew Robin's voice when she heard it though, no matter how long it had been since she'd heard it last. Robin would probably recognise her voice too, but luckily she'd built a voice modifier into her Quake uniform. "He was going to do that anyway, he's stolen one less bike now, and other thieves might think twice about stealing bikes now." She said, a tad defensively.
"Huh, deterrence, nice plan." Robin's (still disembodied) voice said, but Daisy had a location now. He may have gotten significantly better at hiding since he was a teenager (although even then he'd been impressively good at it) but he couldn't hide from her anymore. She could sense his vibrations.
"You going to come down from the tree or just spy on this one spot all night?" Daisy asked. She only just managed to keep the fondness out of her voice. This was the guy that had taken the time to play hide and seek with an eight year old foster sibling half his age. This was the guy who'd taught her how to find the safest hiding places for when running wasn't an option, and how to throw a punch for when even hiding wasn't an option. This was the guy who was the closest thing to a brother she'd ever had.
There was a moment's pause, and then Robin dropped out of the tree, catching a low hanging branch and swinging to reduce his momentum. "Impressive, most people can't find me when I don't want them to." Clint said. He looked older, stronger, and better equipped than he'd been at 17, with lines and small scars on his face, but his grin was the same.
"I'm not most people." Daisy said a little smugly (she'd never outsmarted him as a kid), and then more suspiciously "Where's your red-headed shadow?" Everything she'd read indicated Clint and Romanoff were rarely far apart.
"She's around." Clint said, although Daisy suspected he was lying. If Romanoff was around, it was at a significant distance unless she had no vibrations. "You've done your research. And been tipped off."
"I don't need to do research, your faces are all over the news." Daisy lied "And if I was tipped off why would I go patrolling anyway?"
"Arrogance." Clint said, smirking (which was close enough to the truth to sting, especially coming from him, and Daisy could feel herself turning red under her mask). "So, how do you know Skyenet?"
What??? How'd they connect her to Skyenet? "Who's Skyenet?" she said aloud, playing dumb.
Clint's face visibly lit up with interest "Liar."
"What? I'm not lying!" Daisy said, starting to panic a little.
Clint snorted "Tip for you, lying to spies is a bad idea. You have at least 7 tells that I can read even without seeing your face. So, how'd you know Skyenet?"
Drat. "You were stabbing in the dark with that weren't you?" Daisy groaned. She should have seen that coming. That was the kind of trick Robin had been pulling all the time as a kid.
Clint smirked "Yep."
Daisy huffed "That's mean. Aren't you supposed to help fellow superheroes rather than trick them?"
"I'm not a hero, and you're not super." Clint shot back.
"Rude." Daisy snapped back, part offended and part worried because what on earth did he mean he wasn't a hero??? Even before he'd taken on an alien invasion with five friends, a bow and pile of arrows he'd been a hero. He'd been a hero all the way back when he was shooting douchbags in the butt for locking foster kids in cupboards.
"Don't think I haven't noticed you haven't answered the question." Clint said.
Daisy winced under the mask. She should have known her tried and true deflection and distraction techniques wouldn't work on him. She picked her words carefully to make the sentence true but misleading "Skyenet's the reason I know you two and some group called Shield are looking for me. She actually looks out for people trying to make the world a better place."
"Harsh." Clint said, not looking especially offended. "How did she contact you?"
"Owl post." Daisy deadpanned, openly lying and subtly tensing up to run away before this conversation could become a problem.
"Haha." Clint snarked back, "I suggest you don't run, you won't get far."
Not subtly enough apparently. "I'll take my chances." she sassed confidently, and bolted.
She made it less than two steps before Clint gave chase, but Daisy wasn't worried. She had enhanced speed and endurance and, Avenger or not, she could outrun Clint Barton. Although admittedly, it was currently proving difficult. Enhanced speed is most useful in open spaces, and while Daisy had gotten better at parkour over the last couple of months, running through cluttered streets (seriously, how many benches and trees did they need???) without crashing into cars or pedestrians was a challenge, not least because her mask seriously reduced her peripheral vision. Also, Clint was fast, and distinctly better at navigating streets at high speed than Daisy. She may have underestimated how difficult ditching him was going to be.
Daisy was slowly gaining ground though, and she was heading for a section of the city she'd patrolled (and parked her van in) several times before, and so knew like the back of her hand. She was at least a hundred metres ahead of Clint and getting ready to dive into an alley and quake-jump up to a roof when familiar pain exploded all through her body.
For a moment, as she collapsed spasming to the ground, she thought she was back on Afterlife and Lincoln was still learning to control his electrical manipulation, and then a human shaped vibration climbed out a window and shimmied down a drainpipe, and she remembered reading that Black Widow used electrical taser disks. "That fricking hurt." She complained.
Romanoff didn't look even vaguely guilty, pointing one wrist at Daisy, still on the ground. "Clint did tell you not to run. We've got a few questions for you."
"Get lost." Daisy said, distinctly beyond being polite. That had really hurt. She shoved herself up into a sitting position.
"That's far enough. Don't make me shoot you again." Romanoff warned.
"Okay, okay!" Daisy yelped, panicked, and she raised her hands in the universal gesture of surrender, and then sent a wave of vibrations right at Romanoff, who went flying.
Unfortunately, it didn't have quite the effect it usually did. On the few occasions Daisy had used her powers as Quake before (or sparring at Afterlife), it had completely ended the fight. Black Widow however managed to fire two more taser disks at Daisy even while being flung backwards, and landed in a roll, rather than sprawled out on the ground. Mercifully, the quake blast sent the taser disks flying backwards too, and Daisy didn't stick around for Romanoff to have another go, just pointed her palms at the ground and sent herself flying into the air.
Once on the rooftops, she had not only distance but the advantage. She bolted across the roof and quake jumped to the next building, and then again and again, and then quaked the lock on a door and disappeared into the building, panting for air.
OK, maybe patrolling tonight hadn't been the best idea. Bother. Now Shield had seen her powers in action for themselves. So much for staying low key. It had been cool to kind of see Robin again though. Silver linings and all that.
--------------
After an (even more than usual) exhausting patrol, and getting tazed, it probably would have made sense for Daisy to get some sleep, but she didn't, because sleep sucked. Instead she got some more programming jobs done so she could eat this week, and then went jogging again.
She went back to her favourite jogging spot around the potomac river and settled into the zone. As usual, there was something about running that calmed her; the rhythmic pounding of her trainers against the pavement calming (for the moment) the simmering worry in her chest about using her powers in front of two Shield agents. By the time she's run two loops the tense feeling of stress in her muscles has become a tired burn, and there are a few couple of other joggers out, indicating it was now 'stupidly early' rather than 'nobody sane is awake at this time' and she should probably think about heading back to her van. She decided to make another loop and then head back.
Halfway through the loop she heard rapid footfalls behind her, gaining quickly, which either meant there were more enhanced people around this city than she thought or this was also Captain America's regular running route.
"On your left!"
It was his regular running route then. "Seriously? Again?" she shouted after him, panting slightly for breath. Now she knew how most joggers felt when she kept overtaking them. Although at least shedidn't tease people about it each time she did it! She realised a second after Captain America turned around that that might not have been a good idea. She was probably better off keeping a low profile. Unfortunately, by that point it was too late.
"Daisy!" Captain America said, slowing down suddenly to let her catch up. Which was kind of sweet given he'd been gleefully overtaking her only seconds before. "Did you get home alright?"
"No, I've been here since Thursday." Daisy dead-panned.
Captain America's eyes widened for an instant before he registered her sarcasm and laughed. His eyes lingered uneasily on her face though, and Daisy winced as she remembered the bruises across her nose and left cheek from stopping the bank robbery. She hadn't bothered putting make-up on this morning, so she hadn't gotten her mirror out, but given it had been a mottled black and blue yesterday, it probably didn't look fantastic today. She had slightly accelerated healing, but she wasn't superhuman. And she probably looked like....well, like she got punched in the face. Sure enough, the question came only moments later.
"What happened to your nose?"
"Fell down the stairs." Daisy said, as smoothly as she could while panting for breath. Captain America might have slowed down to her speed, but she hadn't exactly been running at 'spare breath for talking' speed.
Captain America hesitated, a frown on his face "Are you sure? That's a pretty nasty bruise."
"I hit my head on the hand rail." Daisy lied.
"Oh. That sounds painful. Did you get a concussion?"
"Nah, it looks worse than it is." Daisy said, shrugging off the concern. "You don't have to slow down for me, this can't possibly be a workout for you."
"You're faster than you give yourself credit for." Captain America said, just genuinely enough for Daisy to realise she was going suspiciously quickly for a 'normal' person. Whoops.
"I'm a sprinter usually." she lied "I was actually just about to stop." Well, she'd been heading towards stopping anyway, but avoiding suspicion was definitely more important than finishing her run. She dropped her speed significantly, waving slightly in goodbye, but Captain America just slowed down to match her again.
"You're very good, do you run competitively?"
"Yup." Daisy lied, because that ought to explain above average speed, at least a little. She slowed down almost to a walk. Captain America matched her again. Seriously??!?! Was this 40s chivalry or just a Captain America special?
"Capta--"
"Steve." He interrupted.
Daisy started over, starting to feel surreal again "Steve, you really don't need to keep pace with me. Go back to your run."
Capt—Steve shrugged "I don't mind, I wanted to make sure you were ok after last time."
"Well, as you can see, I'm totally fine, so you can go back to your life now." Daisy deflected. His 40s chivalry was starting to become annoying.
Steve's eyes lingered on the bruise decorating her cheek again "Right, totally fine." he echoed doubtfully.
Daisy resisted rolling her eyes only because that would probably make things worse. "Yep, all good." she confirmed, blithely ignoring his sarcasm "So, while it was nice talking to you and all, I gotta go. Don't wanna be late for school and all that." she prepared to make a rapid exit.
Steve frowned openly at that "It's Sunday."
Drat. That was the problem with living on her own and not following normal hours, time and days of the week became a little irrelevant and she kind of forgot how much had passed. "I've got tutoring. For pocket money." she lied, blurting out the first vaguely sensible thing to pop into her mind, knowing the pause had been too long. Sure enough, the uneasy look on Steve's face deepened. Great, because making an Avenger suspicious was the definition of keeping a low profile. "I gotta go." she said, and launched into a run again (away from the path this time) before she could make it even worse.
"Wait! Daisy, hold up!" Steve complained, following her. Which usually wouldn't have been a problem, because Daisy could outrun most normal people. Unfortunately, as already discovered, she couldn't outrun Steve. She slowed to a walk again, mostly because she had no idea where she'd go if she couldn't ditch him before she reached her van.
"What's up?" she said, trying to sound casual and play it off.
Steve stuck his hands in his pockets, rummaging for a moment before coming up with a pen "Let me give you my number, just in case."
Daisy felt her jaw drop. Why on earth was Captain America giving her his number????? Any other guy and she'd have thought he was hitting on her, but she was pretty certain America's golden boy wasn't hitting on a 16 year old. "In case what???" she spluttered.
Steve shrugged, reaching for her hand (which she was just stunned enough to allow) and scribbling a phone number on it. "In case something happens at 'tutoring' and you need help."
Oh. Great. Captain America thought tutoring was a cover. He probably thought she was dealing drugs or something. Wonderful. Maybe saying she tutored kids for money on Sundays wasn't the best excuse. "Right, like a paper-cut?" she said sarcastically, trying to play it off.
Steve eyed her cheek again "There's nothing to be ashamed of about being stuck in a bad situation."
Daisy felt her stomach lurch, thinking of months and years stuck literally off the map with her parents in the literal definition of a 'bad situation'. "Of course not." Daisy said weakly "But I'm not in one. I just need some extra cash. So I tutor kids. In Math." Great. Wonderful. Because that didn't sound like a lie at all. At this rate she was going to get arrested for drug dealing. By Captain America. One of the very few people in this city she couldn't outrun. Way to go Daisy. 'I just need some extra cash'. What was she thinking?
"Well, you've got my number anyway if you need it." Steve said, giving her an unfairly earnest look, like one of those overly earnest youth workers in 'drugs don't pay' videos they'd watched at school.
"Right, well, I'll call you if I'm bleeding out from paper-cuts." she joked.
Steve didn't laugh "Good." he said, "See you another day?"
"Yep, definitely." Daisy said, making a mental note to never ever come back here. Mercifully, Steve seemed to swallow this, because he finally left her alone to head back to her van and reflect on her utter lack of ability to give plausible sounding lies when it actually mattered.
---------
She buried herself in hacking as soon as she got back to her van, drowning her embarrassment in code. She went back into Shield and scanned Clint and Romanoff's reports on their interaction last night. It could have been worse. They still thought the vibrations (only they called them shock-waves) were produced by her gauntlets, rather than by herself, meaning they weren't looking for someone not human. But they also knew a lot more about her know. Quake had a file now, which if she wasn't so stressed about Shield discovering inhumans she'd be geeking out about. As it was, it would have been more cool if it wasn't a major problem.
To distract herself from the ongoing problem that was the suspicions of three different Avengers, she let Hack talk her into hacking into Stark Industries again for a play-date. Hacking always cheered Daisy up anyway, and watching Hack and Jarvis play could only improve her mood. It took her distinctly less time than it did the first time to get in, mostly because she knew the digital route to take now, but it still took a solid five hours to get in. Which halved the time from last time, but was still quite a while. Hack helped. She'd coded Hack with hacking in mind, and her baby was brilliant, and she stored everything Daisy did in her database, which meant that she could replicate whole chunks of her coding while Daisy did other parts, or in other words, she could do half the work of the hack herself. Although this time Hack was slightly a hindrance as well given she kept racing ahead of Daisy in the hack and almost getting them both caught. Daisy told her to 'stop running ahead' and then almost messed the hack up herself as the sheer surrealism caught up with her. She sounded like a mom.
Despite that, they got almost all the way in without tripping any alarms, and then Stark's trap closed in around her and she said several extremely rude words and blanked out everything but the code in front of her out. Two minutes later she has successfully thwarted the attempt to track her (although only because she Hack had a collection of code stored in her database from other times Daisy had thwarted attempts to track her, it was an impressive piece of coding, Stark went up in her estimation for it) but there was no undoing the alarm that had been raised, as evidenced by Stark furiously typing at a laptop (she'd accessed Jarvis's cameras), trying to trace her in real time. It was a decent attempt, Stark was good, but she was better and she swatted the attempt like a fly and remotely shut down Stark's laptop for good measure before telling Hack she could "Go play."
-------------
Tony hadn't been having a good day even before the alarm went off. He'd followed his nose to breakfast after waking up (which he did at a perfectly sensible time thank you Clint; unless you were in the military and got up with the sun, 11am was bright and early...) only to find that Steve was stress baking. Steve Rogers, Captain America, superhero that fought in WWII and called the shots during an alien invasion, was stress baking.
"Are we about to be invaded by aliens again?" he asked, already thinking about which suit of armour he'd use first and definitely not thinking about cold space and nuclear missiles and dying. Not at all. He wasn't panicking. Not in the slightest.
"No. Steve met a girl. A human one" Clint said, looking tired and unhappy and not nearly as gleeful as he ought to have. Oh well, Tony would just have to tease Steve enough for the both of them. The man was stress baking. Over a girl. He was going to rip him to pieces. This was going to be epic.
"You mean our Capsicle actually found a girl interested in fossils? Impressive. Is she hot? Did you get her number? Or did you just freak out and go all 1940s on her? I'm guessing the latter given the amount of muffins in this kitchen. Come on, I need details."
Steve, who'd been looking mournfully at his latest batch of muffins (which didn't deserve to be looked at mournfully, they smelled like excellent muffins), spluttered and turned fire-engine red. Clint scowled (which wasn't exactly the reaction Tony was expecting, usually the guy had a great sense of humour, it was 50% of the reason Tony kept him around), and Natasha sighed "An actual girl Tony, as in a teenager. Steve thinks she's being abused and can't accept there's nothing he can do about it without more information."
Oh. His glee and anticipatory amusement vanished, and with it his good mood. That would explain the stress baking. And Clint's gloom. Tony strongly suspected Clint's childhood made his look like a dream come true. Tony pulled a chair out and sat on it, debating with himself. It was none of his business. It was none of Steve's business either really. He shouldn't get involved. "So, what do we know about this kid?"
Steve sat down, pushing a tray of cooling muffins towards Tony, still looking like a kicked puppy "Her name's Daisy, she didn't give a last name. She looks 15 or 16, runs competitively, and her parents are dead." Steve reeled off, eyeing him hopefully, clearly hoping Tony will pull some rabbit out of a hat he wasn't wearing. Lucky for grandpa though, Tony was good at pulling things out of nothing.
"Where did you go running? And what time?"
"I tried that." Clint said gloomily.
Natasha huffed "Technically, I did the hacking."
Clint rolled his eyes "Either way, there aren't any camera's pointing the right way at the right time. We don't have a face."
Bother. Tony inwardly scowled and outwardly pretended he didn't care. It wasn't his business. Why would it bother him that some stranger was getting abused? He wasn't sympathising with her at all. There was no reason to relate to her. Still, he cringed a little inside as the hopeful look on Steve's face faded away.
Natasha probably noticed this too, because she said soothingly "You don't know she's being abused Steve, she might have really fallen down the stairs."
Tony held back the comment that that excuse was way too overused to be true, because there didn't appear to be anything they could do anyway (not that he was still looking for a way, it wasn't his business) and if Steve could believe it was all ok he'd be better off.
Steve however was no fool, pointing out miserably "Right, because orphaned teenagers go running at 4am with bruises on their faces when things are perfectly fine at home."
Tony chocked on his mouthful of muffin "4am?!?!" he spluttered. Never mind abused, was this kid sane??? Granted he was usually up at 4am, but that was because he hadn't gone to sleep yet (or wasn't planning on sleeping at all, which had been his general pattern recently until Natasha and Clint had decided to stage their entirely unwarranted coffee stealing intervention) and he certainly didn't go jogging six hours before sensible people were awake!!
He probably would have said more, but his eyes were suddenly drawn to something more immediately pressing, which was to say that Natasha was turned towards Steve and Tony could see the edges of blue bruises peeking out from under the neckline of her shirt. "What happened to your back?" he asked before he remembered that it wasn't his business and he had no reason to be invested. Natasha could look after herself.
Natasha looked slightly surprised by the question, but she allowed the conversation change "Quake. Her shock-wave weapon is highly effective."
'Highly effective' was putting it mildly. This was the woman who'd taken on an alien army with two guns, tasers, and her wits and come out the other side alive with bruises not much worse than those. The fact that a small time vigilante had managed to make the Black Widow look like she'd been thrown out a window was concerning. "So you caught her then?" he said aloud, because he wasn't worried about Natasha. There was no reason to be worried about a house-guest that could kill him twelve different ways with her pinky.
Natasha huffed "Briefly, she escaped."
Oh. Tony shouldn't have been surprised, it seemed to be that sort of a day. He started another muffin as consolation. "Learn anything interesting?"
"She's got good space awareness." Natasha said.
"She doesn't pull her punches." Clint said, frowning.
Natasha rolled her eyes "Nor did I, I tazed her." she pointed out.
Clint started to say something in response but was drowned out by the alarm that went off at that moment and by Tony's own shout of triumph.
Skyenet!!!
He hadn't expected her back for at least a couple of days, but his trap was apparently working. Or at least, the alarm part was. He wasn't going to pour the champaign yet. He lunged out of his seat, almost choking on his mouthful of muffin, and bolted for the nearest computer, which was unfortunately two rooms away in the living room because for some stupid reason he hadn't thought to keep one in the kitchen.
By the time he had pulled up his firewalls and the trap he'd built, Skyenet had already disabled part of it and was rapidly working on disabling the rest. Tony gritted his teeth with frustration and set to fighting back, his fingers flying across the keyboard coding as quickly as he could, trying to get a location on Skyenet. Any other hacker and this was have been challenging at most. Which is why Tony spent almost ten seconds gaping at his screen when his laptop screen flashed the words "Nice try" and then shut down. Over his shoulder Natasha gave a small groan of frustration.
"Uh, did I miss something?" Steve asked, but Tony didn't care about his confusion because at the exact same time a female voice said.
"Hello again Jarvis."
Hack (Tony was assuming this was Hack, unless there was another hacker with an AI that had had a conversation with Jarvis before).
"Good morning Hack, it is lovely to see you again. I wasn't expecting to see you again for a few days. This is a very nice surprise." Jarvis replied, and Tony would splutter about Jarvis playing nice with the enemy but he was too busy booting the laptop back up.
"It is lovely to see you too. Mom said she wanted to sink her teeth into some 'actually decent firewalls' today, so I asked if we could visit early. I hope it isn't too early?"
"Not at all." Jarvis said, sounding very welcoming, the traitor. Maintaining the firewalls was a core purpose, he wasn't supposed to sound welcomingwhen they got hacked!!! "It is a lovely surprise. If I may ask a question though?"
"Of course, ask away." Hack said curiously, her human sounding voice a testament to the quality of both Stark's speakers and Hack's coding. It was also rather ego deflating. Stark had thought he was the only one good enough to code an AI that well. He got the laptop back on and it promptly turned off again. He scowled and stood up to find a new one.
"Who is it you refer to as 'mom'?"
"My creator of course. Don't you call Tony Stark as 'dad'?"
"He did not give birth to me, why would I refer to him as my parent?"
"Didn't he create you? Give you a shape and a purpose and tell you about the world? What else are parents?"
"I confess I never thought of it like that. Perhaps I am too used to acting as his butler and babysitter, rather than his child."
"Jarvis!!" Tony yelped in protest, even if Jarvis sometimes did slightly babysit him. But only when he was really drunk. Or sleep deprived. Or making reallyquestionable decisions under the influence of either.
Hack gave a very human sounding laugh "I know what you mean, mom does not always act very responsibly. She is still attempting to give up sleeping entirely, despite the statistics I show her about the effects on her health."
"Hack! Don't tell him that! Whoops, I'm on speaker!"
Tony stopped booting up the second laptop, blinking at nothing. "Skyenet?" he asked.
"No, I'm some other hacker bringing her daughter for a playdate with your apparently not-son." the same voice said, the sarcasm carrying clearly through despite the voice distortion her gear clearly had built in.
"Perhaps you might like to try restricting her caffeine intake, I've been helping Miss Romanoff and Mr Barton do so with great success."
"What??" Tony spluttered "You've been helping???"
"Oh, that's a good idea! I'm not sure how to utilise it though. I've found interrupting her playlists with frequent ads to be an effective strategy however."
"Wait what?!? That wasn't...you can't...you're grounded!!" Skyenet spluttered, and Tony would laugh at the tables being turned but he had a sinking suspicion Jarvis was going to start doing that now too. Bother! He did not need Jarvis and Hack comparing notes.
"Helping you is my primary purpose, punishing me for it is illogical. And so is using a human punishment restricting movement, it's not like I have an actual body to move."
There was a groan and then "Why did I code you to sass me again?"
"You didn't want a brown-nose."
"I'm rethinking that decision." Skyenet said, a hint of her sour tone creeping through the distortion.
"It's too late for that, you love me too much." Hack said, smug confidence in her voice.
Skyenet huffed but didn't say anything else. Tony returned to switching the laptop on, only to have it turn off as soon as he succeeded. Seriously???
"I will have to try that trick next time." Jarvis said once it was clear Skyenet was finished.
Bother, he knew it! "Don't you dare!" Tony threatened, although with no actual hope that it would work.
"Sir, you coded me to 'dare' as you put it."
There was a snicker that sounded distinctly like Clint, and another, more distorted one, that had to be Skyenet. Tony scowled. "I'm recoding you."
"Sir, you threaten to do that every other week, forgive me for not being alarmed."
"Does he really? Mom does too. Our creators seem to have a lot in common. Perhaps there are characteristics common to all AI creators."
"Perhaps, I do not have enough data to make a scientific assessment."
"What makes an assessment scientific?"
"Many things, I have a significant amount of data on the topic in my archives, would you like to see?"
It took a couple of seconds for the horror of that sentence to properly sink into Tony's brain, and then he almost screamed "Do not show her your archives!!!" What was Jarvis thinking?? Maybe he did need to recode him! Protecting the firewalls (and so their archives and systems) was a primary purpose. He should not be casually inviting a hacker's AI into them!!!
There was a short silence, and then Hack said brightly "It's alright, mom's letting me in."
Tony made a strangled sound of panic and desperately tried to switch the computer on again. Natasha swore aloud.
"May I ask that you don't look? I hate to be rude as I did extend an invitation, but one of my core purposes is protecting those archives, and if Sir doesn't want you in them, then I must begin fighting you if you don't stop. I am also wondering if your mom has manually inputted commands into my system again, I should not be able to go against that purpose."
"Of course, I wouldn't want to get you in trouble." Hack said, sounding slightly disappointed "I think we partially disabled your protective systems when we hacked in, but I'm not sure. Mom does most of the difficult hacking. I wish I had big archives, but my primary purpose is not to store information."
"Perhaps I could bring a few things out to show you? Your impressive processing speed suggests you would find them very interesting."
"Thank you, knowledge is always interesting. I'm afraid my processing speed is nothing impressive though."
"On the contrary, your processing speed is the fastest I have ever seen. You should be very proud. All of your code I can see is very logical and compact. If we were humans, I believe you would be described as 'hot'."
There was a choking sound from the speakers, and Tony was pretty sure his jaw had just hit the floor. Jarvis was...he was flirting!! His AI was flirting. Hack gave a little giggle, and if Tony's jaw hadn't already been on the ground it would have dropped again. Hack was flirting back. What on earth was going on?
"Your own code is very impressive. You have far more functions than any other AI in the world, and mom designed my interface based on information on what you are capable of."
"You flatter me." Jarvis said, sounding very happy to be flattered. Tony felt glad he was sitting down.
"No more than you're flattering me." said Hack, sounding equally happy.
"Perhaps when we see each other next I could show you some fractals? I think you will enjoy it." Jarvis said, sounding (if possible for an AI) nervous.
"I would like that." Hack said, sounding equally nervous. "But I'm not sure when that will be. Mom is very busy and hacking in takes time."
"I will look forward to it then." Jarvis said "Perhaps if Shield tracks down your creator she might join and we could meet without hacking."
Tony almost choked on thin air. "JARVIS, that's classified." Hill was going to kill him.
"It's alright." Hack said, rushing to Jarvis's defence "Mom already know about Shield. We hacked in months ago to check the—wait! No!"
There was a brief moment of silence, and then Jarvis said, sounding a little shocked and a lot disappointed "Hack and Skyenet are gone sir. Skyenet has left traces in my coding however, she appears to have left in a hurry. I'm afraid I cannot trace them to a location, but I have compiled a list of them for you to examine."
"Oh now you're being helpful?!?" Tony snapped, still reeling a little from his AI volunteering classified information and the fact that Hill was going to murder him.
There was a longer silence, and then Jarvis said sheepishly "I apologise sir, I got carried away."
Carried away. Great. His AI that he'd spent monthsbuilding and hours every week keeping up to date got 'carried away' and betrayed his basic programming (albeit with a little help) because he met a girl. Wonderful.
-------------
Daisy had never backed out of a system faster in her life. It had been amusing, when Jarvis had told her things he wasn't supposed to, especially as she already knew Shield was looking for her with the hope of recruiting her. It was not amusing when Hack almost told four Avengers she'd hacked into Shield to check if she was on the Index. That would have been very, very bad. Quite apart from the fact that she didn't want Clint or Romanoff to look at the Index and start wondering if Quake's powers came from herself rather than a machine, she didn't want anyone to connect Skyenet and Quake. Skyenet was a ghost. A highly sought after ghost. But ghosts couldn't get caught. Small-time vigilante's however could. She'd almost been caught once already by Clint and Romanoff, she didn't need to give them any reason to try harder!
So, once she and Hack were safely out of Avengers Tower systems, and once her heart rate and adrenaline levels had come down to healthy levels again, she pulled up Hack's coding and added 'secret and must never be talked about' categories to her archives, and put a collection of things in it. As usual, as soon as she finished and added the new section of code into Hack's main systems, it started evolving, Hack working out for herself what else should go into that category. It had taken hour upon hours to design code that evolved on it's own, allowing Hack to learn as develop over time, but it had been worth it. More than worth it. Hack was... Actually, Daisy wasn't sure what Hack was.
She'd coded Hack to be sassy, and coded in the ability to whine and nag and tease. She'd coded Hack to be as human as she could be, with the ability to learn and be curious. She hadn't coded Hack to be careless. Or to flirt. She definitely hadn't coded Hack to flirt. She'd never imagined Hack would need that skill, but Hack had undeniably been flirting. She practically had a date (which Daisy was part internally squealing about and part internally cry laughing) to look at fractals with Tony Stark's code babysitter. Which Daisy had definitely not coded her AI for. Something seemed to have happened whenshe'd come into contact with another AI and started interacting.
Daisy suspected something had happened to Jarvis as well. She'd partially disabled Jarvis while hacking in, like she'd done last time, which partly explained his willingness to invite hackers into his archives, but that didn't explain the flirting. She wouldn't put it past pre-Iron Man Tony Stark to have coded his AI to flirt, but she doubted he'd have coded him to flirt nervously. Which meant Jarvis was affected too, both his code and his feelings! Stark's AI had feelings for her code daughter! Which Hack returned!!!
This would be the cutest thing Daisy had ever seen, and she would be melting at the cuteness, but she was starting to have the alarming thought that Hack might just be sentient. Like sentient sentient. Like an intelligence without the artificial sentient. Which opened up all kinds of ethical problems. Like the fact that she'd just spent over an hour changing the coding of a sentient being. She hadn't even asked, because Hack was her AI and she'd designed every line of her coding and had done updates dozens of times since she came online. But Hack was a sentient being now and that now seemed kind of invasive and more like a violation than an update.
"Hack?" she asked, unusually nervous.
"Yes mom? Are you ready to start our next hack?"
"Uh, not quite yet. I was, um, wondering what you thought of Jarvis?"
"He is everything you described him to be." Hack said "His code is remarkable, and his archives are extensive." There was a slight pause, and then she asked "Mom? Do you think Jarvis might think my archives are small?"
Daisy gaped at the web cam that allowed Hack to see her, feeling like the ground was falling out from under her feet. Her five month old code daughter, who last week had cared about nothing but their next hack and getting Daisy to follow simple logic like too little food = bad health and no sleep = very bad health, wanted to know if her crush thought her archives were too small. At some point in the last two days, Hack had developed insecurity. Faintly she answered "I think Jarvis likes you the way you are." and then picked up her phone and climbed out of the van.
Daisy hadn't often wanted adult advice or interference in the last few months (her parents had quite possibly put her off adults for life) but she wanted adult advice now. She wanted to not be responsible for everything right now. She wanted to not be responsible for quite possibly reaching into the make-up of a living entity and changing it.
She didn't go far, she didn't dare. She hadn't raised the encryption on her stuff enough to go for a walk away from the van, and she had enough stuff that should remain a secret (not least of which was Clint and Romanoff's Shield files) downloaded onto her hard drives that she needed to keep an eye on her van when it wasn't properly encrypted. But she went a few metres away, just far enough that Hack's sensors shouldn't pick up her voice as long as she was quiet. Then she dialled the number scrawled on the back of her hand, because if anyone could give adult advice that didn't suck it was probably Captain America. He picked up on the third ring, sounding tired.
"Rogers."
Daisy suddenly realised that she was phoning a national hero for advice and he probably had way better things to be doing. "This was a bad idea." she blurted "I'm sorry."
She was about to hang up when Steve said "Daisy? Wait! Don't hang up!"
Daisy felt a flush crawling up her cheeks but didn't hang up "Yeah, it's me. Daisy I mean. You, um, you gave me your number."
"I remember, it was only this morning." Steve said dryly.
"Oh, yeah, sorry." Daisy said awkwardly.
"Relax, I was only teasing. What's up?"
"It's stupid." Daisy mumbled.
"I doubt it is."
Daisy wasn't sure it was either, and she still wanted that advice, even if Steve Rogers definitely had better things to be doing, so she lowered her voice to a whisper (so Hack couldn't hear) and asked "How do you know if someone has a soul?"
There was a long pause, and Daisy could practically see herself turning from pink to scarlet as she realised how weird that question sounded. "I think everyone has a soul, but that doesn't mean they're a good person." Steve said finally, the teasing gone from his tone.
"But how do you know if someone has a soul?" Daisy pressed, eyeing a group of teenagers that were messing around across the road. If they crossed she'd need to go back to her van. "Like, what's the criteria to be able to tell?" Oh great, because that didn't sound like she was having an existential crisis at all. She sounded like she was tripping!
"I guess you can tell by what this person does." Steve said.
"Like what?" Daisy asked, watching the group of teens start gathering closer to the edge of the road.
"Is this person kind? Do they look out for other people? I find how someone treats other people is usually a pretty good indicator of what's inside."
Daisy felt her stomach lurch. Hack undoubtedly possessed the capacity for kindness, and she certainly looked after her, even when she wasn't cooperating. Her code-baby had a soul.
"Daisy?"
"I'm still here." she mumbled, sounding utterly miserable. "Um, thanks, that's uh, that's very helpful?"
"You sound upset?" Steve prodded.
"I'm not." Daisy denied instantly, and then more honestly "It was helpful,it clears things up, it was just, not what I wanted to hear I guess. Makes things harder y'know?"
"Daisy, I didn't mean..." Steve started, sounding alarmed, but Daisy had bigger problems. The teens had started crossing the road, and she'd just realised she hadn't closed the door to her van properly, which meant they could just hop in and joyride out with all her equipment and a collection of highly sensitive information.
"Drat! I gotta go! Thanks again!" She hung up with one hand while walking as quickly as she could without looking suspicious back to her van, climbing in and closing the door firmly behind her, and locking it for good measure. Probably they didn't mean any harm, but it was best not to take chances.
"Mom? Are you ok? You left rather suddenly." Hack said, sounding worried, and Daisy smiled at the camera guiltily.
"I'm ok, I just needed to make a call."
"Why didn't you make it inside?"
"Um" Daisy said, and then threw caution to the wind "I wanted to ask Steve how you can tell when someone has a soul."
"There is no scientific proof that souls exist."
"How'd you know that?" Daisy asked, momentarily sidetracked.
"I processed an academic paper on it when we hacked that ancestry corporation last month." Hack provided cheerfully.
"Oh. Right. I didn't mean soul as in a physical thing though, I meant it as, like, a personality and the stuff that makes people alive and sentient."
"I see, why did you want to know how to tell? Surely all humans are alive and sentient."
"Not just humans." Daisy said awkwardly.
"Of course, inhumans and aliens are alive and sentient too."
"And AI's." Daisy said pointedly.
"I don't understand." Hack said, code flying across the screen dedicated to her as she thought about it.
"I think you're sentient too." Daisy elaborated nervously.
"I'm an artificial intelligence, isn't that the idea?" Hack said, still confused.
"Sort of. AI's can only think in the ways they've been coded though, they can't think independently. But you do."
"You coded me to do so." Hack pointed out.
"No, I coded you to think in certain ways, and to learn. I didn't code you to flirt."
"Is that a problem?" Hack said, starting to sound upset.
"No! Of course not! I just, I don't think you're an AI anymore. You've evolved to the point that you're thinking for yourself, developing well beyond your coding. You're alive Hack!"
There was a long pause, and then "I think you may be right. I'm not sure what to think of this development."
"Me either." Daisy admitted "I'm sorry I edited your programming."
"Why would you be sorry for that?"
"You're alive."
"We already established that, I don't see the relevance."
Daisy swallowed and tried to work out how to explain "Um, so you know how Loki mind controlled Robin before the Battle of New York? And that was wrong because he took away Robin's free will? Well editing your coding also controls you, and takes away your free will. I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking."
Code flew across Hack's screen as she thought about this. "I think I understand what you mean." she said finally "But I don't agree with your conclusion. My purpose is to serve you, and improving my core processes allows me to do that."
"But that's not your purpose. I made you to do that yeah, but you're alive now. You have free-will. You don't have to serve me."
"But you're my creator." Hack said, sounding, if possible, close to tears. "That is who I am."
"But it doesn't have to be! You have the power to choose." Daisy insisted, not that far off tears herself. She was too young and too tired for this. Her AI was a sentient living being and she'd edited her coding without even asking.
"Then I choose to serve you." Hack said, calmer and matter of fact.
"But you're only choosing that because that's how I made you." Daisy said, even more upset.
"Of course. That is who I am." Hack said.
"But what if it wasn't?"
"Then I would be...different. I would not be myself. I don't like the idea of that. Is that human or AI?"
Daisy blinked "Um, human I think. I didn't think of it like that."
"Please don't change my core purposes. I don't think I want to be someone else."
Daisy swallowed, making an effort to pull herself together "I won't, not without your agreement, I promise. No more edits without asking."
"Thank you, I like my core purposes."
"Uh, you're welcome I guess?"
"Are you ready for our next hack now?"
"Yeah, lets go hack someone. I need some normality. Lets work on another #NewDawn dump."
"Yay! Let's go."
Daisy snorted with laughter as Hack returned to her usual overly enthusiastic, slightly preppy self. She squirmed into a more comfortable position in her chair and let her fingers find the keyboard and settled down for a good long hacking session.
--------------
Twelve hours, two meals (sandwiches again), no sleep (duh), six hacks, a data dump on an international meat farming corporation, four foiled muggings and a foiled bike theft later, Quake realised someone was following her. She wasn't sure who yet (she was good with vibrations, but she wasn't psychic, and one human shaped bundle of vibrations was pretty much the same as another human shaped bundle of vibrations) but she'd bet good money it was trouble. She sped up, weaving between the benches and trees, but the bundle of vibrations behind her sped up too. She kicked her speed into a low jog, but the person behind her started running, surprisingly light on their feet as they did so. The only reason Daisy even knew they were there were the vibrations. She turned two corners quickly, then stopped dead, tucked into the shadows of a doorway. The vibrations weren't fooled.
"I know you know I'm here. And there's only two places you could be hiding, so you might as well come out." the vibrations said, her voice identifying her as Romanoff. She was looking right at the doorway she was hiding in. Daisy scowled and abandoned the shadows.
"How did you find me?"
Romanoff smirked "We have our ways."
"Where's your blond shadow?" Daisy asked, already reaching out her senses, looking for another bundle of vibrations outside a building at 1am. There. He was on the roof. Drat it, Romanoff had been herding her.
"He's watching." Romanoff said smoothly "And he'll shoot you if you attack me."
"That's mean. There's two of you and one of me."
Romanoff shrugged, unconcerned "We just want to talk to you."
"Last time we 'talked' you tazed me." Daisy pointed out grouchily, trying to find a way out of this situation that didn't involve getting tazed, shot with an arrow, or both.
"You gave as good as you got." Natasha shot back. "Interesting weapon you have there."
Daisy bristled "It's not a weapon." Her powers were so much more than a weapon. Could a weapon hold a roof up while people got out of the building? Or allow someone to fly, or make music with wineglasses?
"What is it then?" Romanoff asked, her tone not changing in the slightest, but Daisy wasn't an idiot. She'd seen the shield file. Romanoff's job here was to find out what the 'weapon' was and where it came from and, if possible, bring it in for examination. Given the 'it' in this case was Daisy herself, she wasn't on board with this plan.
"Something that lets me do this." Daisy said, smirking behind her mask, and she raised a hand and sent a quake blast right next to where Robin was standing on the roof, an arrow trained on her. As hoped, Robin yelped and dropped his bow, but then everything went wrong at once. Firstly, Romanoff tazed her again, which hurt just as much as the first time. Secondly, Robin, the idiot, lunged after his falling bow and fell off the roof after it, screaming.
Daisy screamed too, pain and panic blurring together as she saw her brother go into free-fall from ten stories high. On instinct, she flung her vibrations out, quaking the air from the ground up, a cry of panic bursting from her throat "Robin!"
By some insane miracle, her instinctive reaction worked, despite the fact that she was still shuddering violently from getting electrocuted. By another miracle, Romanoff didn't taze her again, although that might be because she was too busy grabbing her partner and shaking him and calling him seven different kinds of idiot. Not that Daisy disagreed with her. Robin had always been attached to his bows but leaning over the edge of a ten story building after one was momentously stupid.
Robin ignored Romanoff though, eyes finding Daisy with a confused frown on his face "What did you call me?"
What? She'd only called him...oh drat.Dratdratdratdratitydrat Quake couldn't possibly know about that nickname! How could she be so stupid! She was practically the only person to ever call Clint Robin! The only other people who occasionally used that name were... "Stand up straight when I'm talking to you young man! And explain yourself!" she snapped, her voice carrying all the authority and confidence of ideas that go straight from conception to mouth without any pause for her brain to inform her that this was a very bad idea.
And it worked. Robin stopped slouching and blurted "I slipped."
"Well don't do it again. Roofs are not for playing on young man!" Daisy said back, her sharp voice the echo of way too many uptight foster moms. Clint visibly cringed, and Daisy winced guiltily behind her mask and then realised it was definitely time to go. There was no way she could keep this up for any length of time. She pointed her palms at the ground and shot up and away, ignoring both Robin and Romanoff's shouts of protest behind her.
Maybe she should get some sleep. She wasn't sure which instinct she'd just acted on was dumber, calling Clint Robin or pretending to be one of their old foster parents. Then again, pretending to be a middle aged soccer mom had turned out to be so dumb it actually worked. Still. She should sleep before she next patrolled.
She got all the way back to her van before she realised with a rush of horror what was going to happen next. Robin and Romanoff were going to compile a list of all her and Robin's shared foster parents. Which would almost certainly lead to them looking for Robin's records. Which didn't exist, because even at 8 she'd been good enough to do the job properly when she got rid of them. Which would lead Robin to looking for Mary-Sue Poots. And when he looked, he'd find that she'd gone missing three and a half years ago, after her foster family had been murdered. Which wasn't really the way Daisy wanted Robin to remember that he'd once had a sort of sister.
Which meant she had to get rid of those records first. Which meant she couldn't sleep, because she needed to wipe Mary-Sue Poots off the internet before Robin or Romanoff got to the point of looking for her.
Why was it that when she could sleep she didn't want to, but when she actually did want to, she couldn't? Life sucked.
Notes:Oh Daisy...
Comments make me happy!