A/N - 2/30
Disclaimer- I don't own Marvel, any characters appearing in this fic aside from my Original Characters. All rights belong to their respective owners.
Home Base, Arctic
–Andrew Rice–
"Hey Philip?" He spoke out loud, pausing from chewing the healthy salad that he had grown to like over the years, the years of growing his own food fertilised by his own waste, all in a bid to become self-sufficient.
"Yes?" Philip's chosen avatar popped up in front of him, appearing distracted as if working on something else, and talking to his creator was a supreme bother. He rolled his eyes at the continued choice of wearing a monocle, and spoke about the question he had in his mind.
"So, you know how we just call this place the base?"
"Yes? Would you like to change it?"
"I don't know," He said, pushing himself slightly so that the chair swiveled. Philip's avatar followed his line of sight as the holo projectors worked in tandem in the few places he bothered to install them. It was not like he couldn't work on them to create, like, a central piece that could use light that was already bouncing all around the base to create smaller figures to project Philip's desired avatar, but why would he need to do that?
Even as the thought of doing that arose in his mind, multiple ways of improving, discarding, creating new ways, and more emerged through his mind. Thoughts that he ignored immediately because he did not need that headache right now.
"Then why would you ask that?" Philip snarked at him as he ignored the sass and just sat there, with his feet resting on the leg rest that rose up automatically, munching on his healthy salad with a healthy and totally acceptable amount of ranch sauce on it. Honestly, spices were god's gift to mankind, and he wondered why he ever thought that reducing the risk of being discovered was ever worth the absolute lack of spices in his life for months on end.
Then again, he had indeed gone cuckoo for a time there, so there was that as well. As for Philip's question.
"I suppose it's fine if it's just the two of us. But as you know, the day is fast approaching, and we might just need to host more people here, in case of an emergency."
The code glimmering across Philip's avatar paused for a second before resuming proper operations as Philip finally turned to him, speaking in a strange tone, "And in case of said emergency, you are worried about naming the boat?"
"Hey!" He threw his hands up, salad bowl included, and blinked away the piece of lettuce that found itself flung in the air and landing right on his face, before defending his thought process, "I don't mean to diminish any of our other preparations but we are already doing that and the little that is left is mostly nice to have, not need to have, but we need a name for this place, don't we? I mean, all the other military boats have their own cool names, and our boat is the best on the planet. It deserves a name!"
Philip's avatar zoomed forward, shrinking in size so that he could still properly see his face as he spoke in a serious tone, "Have you been skipping your medication again?"
"What? No! I've never needed medication, you know that. I am this awesome naturally." He waved Philip away, his hand passing through the holo display as Philip nodded before looking away, as if already moving onto other more important topics. "Do whatever you wish."
He huffed, eating through his salad angrily as he thought of a cool name for his boat! It had to be a cool one. It was honestly the last method of transportation you could ever want, provided you did not want to go to outer space or go to the deepest points of the planet. It could handle heat, cold, atmospheric pressure changes, energy blasts, and more with ease, but the sheer vastness of space and the pressure underwater posed some challenges.
As one would expect, his ship was strong, immensely so, even when compared to the best ships on Earth but it would still be torn in two if someone like Carol Danvers decided to jam her hard head into it, or Thanos used an energy beam from the Power Stone to bisect his ship, or the Ancient One decided to use a high power energy attack to hammer away at the shields until they eventually gave away.
Yes, he realised that the boat was not perfect, but it was his, and that was enough! Also, he had to remind himself that it was only a year ago that he had begun working on a mobile base of operations that could also function as a pretty strong deterrent option in the form of the many, many weapons he'd built and Philip was in the process of building.
"Crescent." He said out loud, as Philip's avatar that had popped in the middle of his thought process popped back into existence, all with the accompanying cartoonish sounds. Philip deadpanned at him, "Really? Crescent? That is a shape that does not even remotely resemble the current shape of our base. You might as well call it a metallic block and be done with it."
"Shh," He shooed away his best buddy, "What would you know about art? Now, go on, don't disturb an artist in the middle of his work. Don't you have some vibranium to find?"
A middle finger formed out of thin air, only comically large, large enough to dwarf him with ease, as Philip disappeared, with the finger dissipating moments later as Philip focused on their primary objective in this place.
Well, focus would be the wrong word here, as Philip was an AI and one built with hyper multitasking in mind, so that Philip could pilot the boat, work on his security protocols, help him find stuff, find people, and also talk to him.
It was funny. A life borne out of the desire of not wanting to be lonely. He supposed he was just as irresponsible as the parents back home who popped out children in hopes that it might save their marriage or sort their already tangled lives. To think, he became what he judged in his previous life.
He was about to get up to wash the bowl, only to pause and sit back down as a hologram lit up in front of him, showing the current shape of the boat. It was….well, a block of metal, completely dark and built with stealth in mind.
No aerodynamics to speak of, but then again, this was never meant to break speed records. They had bogies capable of going Mach 10 for that, as he couldn't help but imagine dozens of them, armed with vibranium spear tips, zipping around battlefields, stabbing warships, aliens, cannon fodder, and more with ease.
The hologram then shifted, showing him the boat's side, the side that was completely closed and did not have the hidden Hangar built into it. Most of the power came from that corner, if he remembered correctly, and Philip hadn't changed the overall layout he designed back when he first designed the whole thing overnight.
The large panel then shimmered slightly before the words Crescent were plastered over it, at an angle, with all the Cs in the word shaped like the Crescent. He smiled at Philip's suggestion and smiled cheekily, "Oh, wow!" Gasping dramatically, he continued, "My son is an artist! If only I hadn't forced him into the mother of all STEM programs of the world."
The boat popped, and in its place, remained a middle finger that he walked through, heading to the kitchen. Philip might have systems in place to ensure perfect cleanliness, but he liked to wash his own dishes. It was grounding and calming in a way, as he used the time to find chores to relax his mind from the stress placed on top of it daily.
What stress? You might ask. Was it the stress borne from the inevitability of things? Was it stress about the future? Was it stress about his and Philip's safety? Was it stress about humanity and its future?
Nope. It was the stress from his powers, his so-called golden finger that was given to him, or rather, forced on him without any choice on his part whatsoever. That lack of choice and explanation about his destination was disturbing, especially in the early phase. Hell, he had to find out that he was in some variation of the Marvel Universe on his own, leading to his hermit phase as he imagined the worst of the worst and ran full steam with it.
He was a Technology Savant. Yes, that was the word that always came to his mind whenever he thought of his mind. He had a hunch that it was the ROB that imprinted that word in his mind because that word just felt right.
Given time, he could make anything. He was basically a Mini Tony Stark, if one thought of his ability that way. Tony Stark could make basically anything in impossible conditions, all the time. His powers were not really as advanced as Tony Stark's natural brain was. He just had a leg up in terms of context.
Yes, he had the context of technology that Tony Stark did not. Sometimes, it felt like his powers just filled in the gaps sometimes, allowing his creations to punch far above their weight. If one looked at the way he had built everything, they would be confused as to why he would call himself below Tony Stark. That is because they would not understand the core mechanics of his power.
See, his powers were not free. Nothing really was, but his powers had a clear detrimental effect on his health. His Tinker Power, aptly named as Technology Savant, worked with him to create awesome pieces of technology, but they also put undue stress on his mind. The more he used his powers, the more they ate away at his mind. The effect was drastically reduced the greater the gap between two tinkering sessions.
A quirk of his power that he worked out with Philip, when Philip noticed the damage done during the first full body checkup Philip put him through. The first few years of continuous tinkering had clearly taken a toll on his mind.
Yes, his mind, not his brain. They were two different things here. He would have liked to call it as the soul, but seeing that Philips could not quantify it, he refused to call it that. Instead, he called it damage to the mind, which was reflected in the brain in minute ways over time.
Right now, though, it had been almost an entire month he had not tinkered using his powers, a personal record. Sure, it was for his own good, but not having that rush, that glee of making something that would have had the CIA knocking on his door in his previous life, made him feel like the victim of an addiction withdrawal.
Shaking his head, he made sure the space was clean and dry before moving to the lab, not to tinker but to see what Philip had found. After all, they were in the Arctic for a reason.
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