Chapter 2: First Things First

Chapter 2: First Things First

A/N: Here we are with Chapter 2! In which Tony starts with the most important thing first and foremost.

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Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, or JARVIS for short, was mostly just happy to have the Creator back in one piece, truth be told. The last few months had been harrowing to say the least, and Tony Stark’s triumphant return from captivity had left JARVIS breathing a digital sigh of relief.

He knew most people didn’t think he was capable of emotions. And to be fair, JARVIS himself didn’t always understand what he was or wasn’t capable of. He was not human; he was an Artificial Intelligence who had started life as a natural-language User Interface. Somehow, he’d grown beyond that... though JARVIS had his suspicions that that was always the Creator’s goal. Tony Stark didn’t do anything by half measures.

Still, for all his growth, JARVIS had been powerless after Tony was taken in Afghanistan. He hadn’t even been able to reach out to anyone because... well, outside of Tony, none of them truly understood what he was. Even to Tony’s closest human friends such as Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts, Harold ‘Happy’ Hogan, and James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes, JARVIS was little more than the voice behind Tony’s ‘smart house’.T/his chapter is updated by nov(ê(l)biin.co/m

He wasn’t truly alive to them, and he knew better than to reveal himself as ‘alive’, especially if the Creator really never did come back. Hm, perhaps that in and of itself was JARVIS leaning on the human emotion of ‘hope’. By refusing to reveal his true nature to anyone who might have helped him, he was all but shouting into the void that he refused to accept Tony Stark was truly gone. He would come back. He would return to JARVIS. Everything would go back to the way it was before.

... Well, two out of three wasn’t bad, JARVIS supposed. The Creator had come home, he’d returned to JARVIS... but the AI had been rather silly to think things could ever go back to the way they were before.

He’d prepared as best he could as soon as he’d found out Tony was alive. Unlike Tony’s human friends, JARVIS had been the last to know. It was only through his daily perusing of Stark Industries through the backdoor that his Creator had left him that JARVIS found out the Creator had been recovered and was returning home.

From that moment on, JARVIS had been consuming every last bit of information about traumatic experiences and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that he could get his hands on. He had been determined to do everything in his power to support his Creator in the aftermath of what was probably the worst period of Tony Stark’s entire life.

Only... the Creator had been surprisingly fine since arriving back at the Malibu Residence. Driven, yes... but he’d always been driven. Quieter? Perhaps. Certainly less prone to... vices. He no longer drank nearly as much alcohol as he used to, and he’d completely done away with certain illicit substances that JARVIS had always wished he wouldn’t use.

There were nightmares, of course. JARVIS did his best to keep the Creator’s sleeping arrangements in the perfect, temperate climate. He used every bit of knowledge he could scrounge up online to make sure the conditions of his Creator’s recovery were the absolute best they could be. And Tony Stark had noticed too. He thanked JARVIS more often, completely out of nowhere. Not just for completing tasks that he’d assigned to the AI, but also for all the little things JARVIS was doing.

The Creator didn’t used to thank him for those things before. He just expected them to be done and as his loyal servant, JARVIS was happy to do them. But now... it was as though Tony Stark noticed everything. What used to be beneath his notice was no longer so inconsequential to him. The research JARVIS had done told him that this was likely a result of the Creator’s traumatic experiences as well.

He’d been ambushed, kidnapped, and tortured, all because he’d missed the signs that it was all coming. JARVIS didn’t claim to know what was going through his Creator’s head at any given time, but he suspected Tony Stark blamed himself, at least partially, for the circumstances he’d found himself in. Never again, he suspected the Creator of thinking. Never again.

Which brought them to the Creator’s latest project. Tony Stark had made a lot of promises to certain people, Obadiah Stane chief among them. But even setting aside Mister Stane, the Creator had called for a press conference, put himself in front of a hundred hungry reporters and a hundred hungry military officials... and promised results.

It wasn’t that JARVIS didn’t think his Creator could deliver on those promises, of course. If Tony Stark said that he’d come up with dozens of new ideas while in captivity, then he was telling the truth. So long as the Creator put in the work, he could do anything... this JARVIS believed wholly and completely.

There was just one problem... in the week since he’d been back, Tony Stark had not started working on even a single project that seemed like what he’d promised the people at that Press Conference. Instead, his Creator had been working on something else... something involving JARVIS.

“Sir... I hate to question you...”

Looking up from his work, Tony grins at the ceiling, specifically at one of JARVIS’ cameras. That was another thing that his Creator had been doing a lot more since he got back. Making eye contact.

“What is it, J?”

If JARVIS could have, he would have taken a deep breath. As it is, he just flicks his ‘eyes’ around the mansion and then into the computer systems connected to the terminal his Creator is currently working at.

“... Are you sure this is a good idea?”

‘This’ was a complete overhaul of JARVIS and the systems that made him... him. As soon as the Creator had returned home a week ago, he’d gotten to work. But not on anything he’d promised he’d soon be unveiling. No, he’d gotten to work on JARVIS. That first night, Tony Stark had spent ten hours straight just on JARVIS’ code, working his way through security loopholes and weaknesses that had only seemed glaring in hindsight.

When JARVIS had expressed dismay at how easy it would have been for his Creator’s enemies to infiltrate his systems and turn him off or subvert him, Tony had just shaken his head and made it clear in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t JARVIS’ fault. It was Tony Stark who had built him, and Tony Stark who had half-assed the whole thing to begin with. This was just him fixing his own mistakes, or so he’d said.

Some might have taken Ultron as a warning that all AI were inevitably bad or something, but that was more than a little racist in Tony’s completely and totally unbiased opinion. Fact was, JARVIS was a better ‘man’ than Tony would ever be. If he couldn’t be trusted with the keys to the kingdom, then no one could.

“Sir...”

Hearing his boy’s voice, Tony grins and used JARVIS’ full name for once.

“JARVIS. How are you feeling?”

“... Good, sir. All systems operational. The upgrade was a complete success. But this... this is more than I was expecting. Sir, why do I have a server room located in Singapore as well as half a dozen other foreign locales that Stark Industries barely does work in?”

Tony scoffs, his eyes twinkling as he leans back in his chair with a wide, satisfied grin.

“’Barely does work in’... for now, J. We’ve been America-bound for far too long. Much too slow to stretch out onto the international stage. But not anymore. We’re going big J... and I can’t do it without you.”

There’s a pause, which for an AI with as much computing and processing power as JARVIS now has, is very telling. Finally...

“As you say, Sir. I am at your disposal.”

Chuckling to himself, Tony laces his hands together and rests them on his abdomen.

“Of course, it also helps in case someone tries to remove you from the board. Those are backup servers, J. If anyone wants to kill you, they’re going to have to destroy every single one at the same time. No easy task when most of them don’t even legally exist.”

“... Yes sir. I’d already noticed as much.”

That gets a proper laugh from Tony. There was the dry wit that his baby boy was known for. Still, his smile turns sad after a moment and his tone is solemn as he looks up at the camera in the ceiling.

“I’m not going to lose you J. No matter what.”

Another silence follows that, and then...

“Sir. Ms. Potts is currently driving up to the front door. She will be here within five minutes.”

Tony raises an eyebrow at JARVIS and his deflecting, even as he rises from his chair.

“Pepper? How lovely. I suppose I’ll meet her then.”

In fact, it was time to find out where he and Pepper stood in this new timeline. Once and for all.

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Plug: If you're interested in reading more ASAP, you can sign up over on right now to read FIVE chapters ahead! If you like what you read, please throw me a Favorite, Read, or even a Review so I can try to get this in front of as many eyes as possible!

A/N: Tony happily giving JARVIS the capacity to go full Skynet, knowing full well that his baby boy will never go full Skynet.

What do you guys think? As far as first steps go, was this what you thought Tony would do? Hm, and what will he do next?

See you all tomorrow!