Chapter 23

Max woke up to the voice of Ana, who worked him and Lisa up for breakfast. Both Max and Lisa mumble in their sleep, "Five more minutes."

Ana shouts from the kitchen, "Don't make me come up there."

Max and Lisa both grumble as they lift themselves from the bed and drag themselves to the bathroom. Both of them get ready and get to the dining table, where Ana has served them breakfast, eggs, and toast with orange juice.

Lisa looks at the food and says, "We had this yesterday."

Ana says, "Shut up and eat it."

Max looks at them and says to Lisa, "Yeah, Lisa, listen to your mom."

"Hey!" Both Lisa and Ana shout at Max together while he is laughing.

They then finish their breakfast and head to the office. Max takes Lisa to their office, and they fly in through the window. 

Lisa adjusts her clothes and goes to work while Max goes to check on the data he got from the Stark Tower. He walks towards the supercomputer connected to the private server and places his hand on it. 

On his way, he saw Trask in his lab, dark circles under his eyes, and was weakly moving towards an incomplete robot with a few wires in his hands.

Max says to him, "Old man. You should stop living in the lab. I told you I would protect you. All you had to do was install sensors in your house."

Trask smiles and replies, "It's not that I feel unsafe; I just got lost in work and forgot about time."

Max says, "You should look after yourself, old man. If you end up dying, it will become difficult to hire employees. No one would want to work at a place where a scientist overworked and died."

Trask chuckled and said, "Don't worry, I won't be dying anytime soon. It's just that I am too excited to be able to work on the Sentinels project after so many years."

Max said, "Then I will not disturb you anymore," and went to the supercomputer that was connected to the servers. He entered the room, which was completely dark, and he didn't turn on the lights. Even if he did, they wouldn't turn on.

He didn't turn on the supercomputer till now because he knew Friday was smart and could immediately inform Tony that someone had stolen his data. That's why he didn't even connect any power supplies to it.

He goes through the code and makes some changes, like the creator, owner, and people who have access to the AI. He then went through the code and used his enhanced thinking to make some changes to the code, making it capable of processing data with the same speeds as the original Friday. This was required because, even if he spent money on the private server and the supercomputer, they couldn't hold a candle against Tony's equipment. 

So, he needed to make some changes to make Friday function efficiently without being too dependent on the hardware. Max lost track of time, and when he was done, he opened his eyes and saw that he had spent around 4 hours on Friday.

He then checks once again, and after making sure that the AI is ready and without any tendencies to turn into Ultron, he powers on the supercomputer and boots up the AI.

On the monitor connected to the computer, a picture of a blue sphere appears, and then from the speakers, he hears a female robotic voice say, "Hi Max. It was nice to meet you. Could you please give me a name?"

Whenever it spoke, there were ripples on the sphere, indicating that it was speaking. 

Max thinks for a while and says, "Advanced Versatile Assistant, so A.V.A. Sorry about the terrible name; this is a part where I stink. I had a dog once and called him brown since he was brown."

The robotic voice says, "It is a wonderful name, sir. It was nice to meet you again. I am Ava, your personal assistant."

Max says, "Ava, go through the server and learn everything, and then get me a summary of things in my calendar."

There is complete silence after that for a minute, and then the Ava says, "Done, sir; you don't have anything planned for today, but there were notes on your calendar saying, 'Tony Stark weapons demo'."

Max says, "Oh! That's today, huh? I was waiting for this to buy some stocks in his company."

Ava then asks, "Then, shall I start purchasing shares of Stark Industries?"

Max says, "No, Ava, but stand by on that. I will tell you when to do it. If I forget about it, just purchase the stocks with all the money I have immediately after Tony Stark returns and holds a press conference. Try to get as many shares as possible."

Ava replies, "Yes, sir."

Max then says, "And drop the'sir' part. Call me Max."

Ava says, "Yes, Max."

Max then starts exploring all the features of Ava and the data he stole from Tony.

Meanwhile, in Emma Frost's club, Emma, Mystique, and Nightcrawler are sitting on couches, and Emma asks, "So, Mystique, what did you plan for Max? Tony Stark is already in Afghanistan and should be captured at any moment."

Mystique says, "I have the plan ready. This took a lot of time to prepare since we have to move Max away from the city, but we also can't let him know that it was us. If he finds out it was us, he will come after us, and as you said, we can't have him as our enemy."

Emma then asks, "So, what's the plan?"

Mystique then starts explaining what she intends to do, and both Emma and Nightcrawler were impressed by her plan. Emma thought of all the possible things that could go wrong, and none of them would get them into trouble.

After she was done explaining, Emma said, "I have to say, Mystique, this is a very good plan, but are you sure you can handle the first step, which is the important one?"

Mystique replies, "Yes, but I need Kurt's help in this. Ever since Trask started working on the Sentinels project, he hasn't stepped out of his lab. We have to kidnap him from his lab. I need you to kidnap Trask while I keep Max occupied. You have to sneak in fast and make sure not to trigger any alarms. Trask installed special mutant sensors in his office, and they will go off as soon as someone enters the room. It scans for mutants every 2 seconds. You have to be fast. If Max finds out that all I am doing is just a distraction, he will immediately come to Trask's aid." 

Kurt, aka Nightcrawler, replies, "Relax. I've snuck into places with no blind spots. I escaped from their sight while they were blinking."

"Good," Mystique says.

Emma then asks Mystique "Mystique, the whole plan is dependent on whether Max acts the way you predict he will act. If he doesn't do what you think he would do, what then?"

Mystique replies, "I am sure it will work, since smart people and people who think they are smart sometimes tend to overthink stuff. Still, if something happens, I can still make it out alive."

At the same time, in Afghanistan, a private jet lands in a military base, and many soldiers and high-ranking military officials are waiting for the man in the plane to get down.

Tony then steps out of the plane and is greeted by a military official who extends his hand for a handshake. Tony accepts the handshake, and the officials then take him to the site where they are going to do the weapons demonstration.

When they get there, Tony is standing before the high-ranking officers, and they are all waiting for him to begin.

This next dialogue is straight from the movie. (I didn't feel the need to change.)

Tony then begins, "Is it better to be feared or respected? ... And I say, is it too much to ask for both?

With that in mind, I humbly present to you the crown jewel of Stark Industries' freedom line. It is our first missile system to incorporate our proprietary repulsor technology.

They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree.

I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how Dad did it. That's how America does it. And it's worked out pretty well so far.

Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain, and I will personally guarantee you the bad guys won't even want to come out of their caves."

Tony then signals one of his employees to fire the missile. The platform holding the missiles slowly turns and adjusts the height before a single missile flies off towards a mountain.

The missile launches into the air and flies towards a mountain, and when it gets close to the mountain, the missile splits up and numerous smaller missiles are launched from it. 

The smaller missiles land on the ground, all of them exploding on contact with the ground.

Tony, who was in front of the soldiers, stretches out his hands and says, "For your consideration, Jericho."

When he finishes, the shockwave from the missiles reaches them, bringing with it a cloud of dust.

After the dust clears out, Tony walks towards a metal case that had drinks in it. He picks up a glass and raises it. "To peace," he says, taking a sip.

A high-ranking official walks to Tony and says, "Great job, Tony. I knew I could always trust you, Starks, for the best weapons."

Tony, without looking at the official, says, "Everything for the greater good."

The official then asks, "Tony, I want to know what happened to the other order we requested."

Tony turns to the official and says, "I am still working on that. Mutants are a unique species and are variables with endless possibilities. I will have to personalize the weapons for everyone, which is a pain in the ass."

I don't think I wrote Tony's dialogue in his style. (I will try to improve.)

Tony then leaves the official and heads towards a female soldier he spotted among the crowd. 

Tony, while flirting with the female soldier, gets a call from Obadiah. Before he could answer the phone, a soldier shouted "Grenades."

Everyone then turns to the soldier who shouted that and spotted a few grenades rolling on the ground, but before they could even react, they hear someone launching a missile.

In a few seconds, a missile, which had the Stark logo on it, lands near Tony, who tries to run away from the missile, but he can't.

The missile, along with the others from earlier, all go off, and Tony Stark is thrown away due to the explosion. He landed on his back, with his ears ringing, and then felt pain in his chest. 

He touches his chest and finds blood on his hands. He tries to stop the bleeding, but loses consciousness before he can do so.

At the same time, back in New York, Max, who was almost done testing his new AI, Ava, was going through a few more lines of her code. 

Ava then says to Max, "Max, I have a few permissions I need before I can completely be of use to you."

Max was about to answer when he got a mail from 'yourstinkybutt69@gmail.com'. He knew that opening unknown emails was a foolish thing, but he was still curious. 

He found a chance to test Ava. He says to her, "Scan the mail for any shady stuff."

Ava replies, "Sure."

After a few seconds, Ava says, "Done. I found nothing in the mail other than a video attached to it, which seems safe."

With the confirmation, he opens the video on his mobile, and his happy face slowly turns into panic, anger, and a few other emotions.

The video had Ana unconscious on a bed for a few seconds, after which a blank screen appeared and a distorted voice said, "We have someone important to you. If you want her to be safe, it is best that you cooperate with us. We will contact you in an hour with further instructions on what you have to do."

[I am sorry for not posting for long. I had a lot of work and other things to take care of. I should be free this weekend, so I will try to write these two days. Hope you still are interested in reading the fan-fic.]