Nightingale | An Avengers Tale

Chapter 24 ~ goodbye

It had been several hours since I had learned about Peter's parents. Somehow I had managed to change the topic to Star Wars, which had completely thrilled him. He was now convinced that I was secretly as big of a fan as he was; I was now more confused as to why one would watch episode four before episode one.

As for the rest of the Avengers, I had learned that Clint was still at the hospital, and that Bruce had taken Jack to Wakanda to permanently fix his mind control problem. This left Sam and Bucky at Stark's cabin with Peter and I. Normally, I would have been totally cool with the arrangement. But, Bucky kept acting weird around me, and I didn't exactly want to be around Peter at the moment either. Sam was completely oblivious to the underlying tension which was not helping ease the awkwardness that I was beginning to feel.

Eventually, I found my way to Stark's workshop. After everything that had happened, it was nice to finally find a place that was quiet and away from everyone. Within a few minutes, I discovered his laptop, and I was contentedly scrolling through his work. It didn't take long before I was lost in the world of nanotech and completely oblivious to everything around me.

"Good Afternoon, Miss." An Irish voice rang out.

I bolted up with a gasp as I tried to determine where the voice was coming from. Within seconds, I angrily realized that it was just the annoying AI from the quinjet. "Who are you?"

"I am F.R.I.D.A.Y. I was Mr. Stark's personal assistant."

"You were his AI?" I slowly began. That actually did make sense as to why she had been on the quinjet. Stark most likely designed the tech on that as well as in his own home. F.R.I.D.A.Y. was probably built into everything he had designed.

"That is correct. I am pleased to see you survived your most recent encounter. I calculated your odds of survival at 37.4%." She continued on, completely unfazed at my reaction.

"That low huh?" I smiled to myself; at least he had built the thing with a sense of sarcasm.

"On the contrary, it rose from 26.9%."

"How did you even get that number?" I stood up to stretch my legs. I was now genuinely curious about why the AI thought my chances of dying were so high.

"Would you like to look over my math?" The AI politely questioned.

"Yes." I exclaimed. I glanced down to see that the table in front of me had lit up as a holographic image appeared with a complex mathematical formula. I began to read through the problem. As I read, I became more intrigued with the AI. Maybe I should give Stark more credit; after all, this AI was pretty sweet. I bit my lip as I began to wonder what else this thing could do. "Hey, can you pull up the schematics for the Iron Man suits?"

"Of course. Which model?"

"How many are there?" There couldn't be that many, right? I mean you can only wear one at once. Then again, you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time, but that hadn't stopped Lissie from owning over four dozen pairs.

"Over eighty."

"Ok." I let out a sigh; I guess I shouldn't have teased her about owning that many shoes. I continued to stare at the glowing screen. I had absolutely no clue on where to start. "Give me a basic rundown on the suits."