Magical Marvel (HP X MCU) Chapter 201: Torch

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I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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9th March 2012, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

Rose gasped for a second, "This was your plan, wasn't it? You've always wanted this. It's why you disappeared from the wizarding world and faked your death. You want to disappear."

"It's ti for the world to lose its babysitter, Rose. It's ti for you to beco self sufficient. You don't need anymore. You're starting to catch up to the rest of the universe. You're ready."

Before she could respond, Selene's phone bleeped and she read a ssage, "Morrigan, soone is trying to hack our company servers."

I groaned inwardly. Will this day ever end?

I summoned her phone to get a better look at the details of the hacking. Alfred, the virtual intelligence I had created before my travel back in ti, would be enough to put a stop to any overly ambitious organization that wanted to access our servers. Honestly, there was nothing incriminating on there, or actually sensitive. But there were the scripts to a lot of movies, TV shows, and the early drafts of a few books that could affect the company if they were leaked.

Alfred's main goal was to manage the business aspect of the dia congloration that Selene manages. He stopped a few ambitious hackers from getting through our servers, along with a few intelligence agencies, Arican or foreign, but he only gave us a notification after the attack was thwarted. The fact that he's saying that soone was currently hacking our servers would be because sothing was different. I looked more closely and saw that the attacking script was learning, changing itself trying to worm its way in. It was remarkably close to Alfred's own code. But it didn't have the flair that ca with a human consciousness. It was too robust, too structured and logical. We were dealing with another virtual intelligence and the only one who would attempt sothing like this, on my company no less, would be Tony Stark.

I closed my eyes and started scrying for him and as I expected, Tony was up trying to get as much information as possible about . I stopped scrying and sighed in exasperation, "Sorry, girls. I need to take care of sothing. I'll be right back."

I stood up and teleport to the room Stark was in. The man was so engrossed in the computer screen in front of him, that I coughed to get his attention. The billionaire actually jumped back in terror and let out a distinctly feminine shriek. I stifled a chuckled and looked at him with one eyebrow raised, "Seriously, Stark. You didn't even last a single day before trying to hack ?"

The man collected himself and grinned unrepentantly, "I have so trouble sleeping."

I snorted, "Look, kid, it's been a long day. From the invasion, the ss that happened behind, the eting with Odin, I'm tired and I want to go to bed soon. So, you wanted my attention, you have it. Now, make it quick before I just get annoyed and knock you out before going back ho."

Stark actually started sweating at the threat, "I'm sorry, I thought that you were still in Asgard so you wouldn't be there to see if I'm snooping."

I chuckled, "Do you honestly think that I have ti to manage a company as big as mine and make sure that the world doesn't blow up all the ti? I worked as a high school teacher for a ti. I had the sa idea as you to get around it. You have your Jarvis, and I have mine."

The genius yelled out, "You have your own AI?"

I snorted, "Kid, artificial intelligence is such a broad description. Yes, I created a virtual intelligence like Jarvis to run my company, but not a sentient one like you're imagining. Owning a sentient intelligence would be like owning a person. They have their own ambitions, dreams, and hope, their own soul. You would be like enslaving a friend to work for you. It wouldn't be the sa. As far as I know, there is only a single true sentient intelligence on this planet, that's of course discounting the HYDRA nutjob who uploaded his mind into a machine."

When I talked about the only sentient intelligence, I was describing Hogwarts, not the castle, but the sentience that makes sure that the students are alright. I created her with the seed of a soul. It was completely up to her if she wanted to develop it or not, and slowly after centuries, she started to grow into the fully independent being she is today.

Stark though, was completely taken back by the HYDRA comnt, "What do you an a Hydra scientist put his consciousness inside a machine. Hydra doesn't even exist anymore."

I shrugged, "Unfortunately, it does. It's actually your father's fault, believe it or not. I told him it was a bad idea, but the guy can be very stubborn when he's convinced that he's right. He had the bright idea of recruiting HYDRA scientists into SHIELD when it was first being founded. I think it was called operation paperclip. Anyway, he seemingly didn't take into account that Hydra was actually the Nazi's scientific division, so the scientists were the masterminds of the organization, that's outside the Red Skull, of course. They started to recreate Hydra inside of SHIELD and right now, around half of SHIELD are actually loyal to Hydra. Anyway, one of the original scientists, Zola, who was the one who worked with the Tesseract in the first place, didn't want to die, so he was able to translate his thoughts, his mories, his entire personality into digital form and put it in a computer so that he'll be able to help Hydra forever. The process killed him, of course, and his soul passed to the afterlife, but there's a small remnant of the man in the computer. He isn't alive but he technically qualifies as an artificial intelligence, even if he's hard to classify properly."

Stark seed to take a few monts to process the information that I just told him, "Is Zola connected to the internet?"

"Thankfully Hydra didn't connect him to the internet, fearing a Skynet scenario, but even if he was, he wouldn't be able to do as much damage as Jarvis. He wouldn't even co close. His thinking process is entirely human in its base, so he suffers from human limitations. He cannot fork himself, change his own code. His processing power is very weak because no one could upgrade the hardware without killing him."

Tony sighed in relief, but then stiffened, "But what did you say about SHIELD secretly being Hydra. Is that true?"

I nodded, "I don't trust Fury. He's a spy and would manipulate anyone to get what he wants. He did the sa with you, when Coulson died."

Thankfully, I destroyed the Kree technology that Fury would be using to bring back Coulson years ago. It was an abomination that reanimates a body and forces a new soul to inhabit it and fill it with mories and experiences, hoping that it wouldn't go mad. It was just wrong on so many levels, and as soon as I discovered its existence, I destroyed it imdiately.

The billionaire nodded and I continued, "But Fury's clean, Hill is also clean, so was Coulson and so are Barton and Romanoff. So don't worry about it. But the word security council are mostly in their pocket. I think the Secretary Pierce is the current leader of the organization. Why do you think I leaked the eting with the council and Fury, along with their identities. It's an easy way to get the governnts to investigate their actions. Hydra will start to fall and SHIELD is probably going to go down with it."

Tony sighed in relief, "And Dad was responsible for all of this?"

I shrugged again, "It wasn't entirely his fault. After Margaret Sayre 'died', I took another identity and joined SHIELD the mont it was founded. I worked there for a few years, and actually beca one of the main scientists there, along with Hank Pym. We told your father that operation Paperclip was a monuntally stupid idea. But Pym was a rival of your father's and Howard was pretty sexist back in the day, so he ignored us. Soon after, I left, and Hank did a few years later after his wife died."

The billionaire started to get angry, "And you did nothing after that? You didn't think to stop Hydra?"

I snorted, "Kid, I deal with the big things, and by big things, I an doing my best so that no idiot tries to blow up the planet or destroy realities. I make sure that mutants don't destroy the planet, or that the mages don't reveal themselves and start a world war, or that sorcerers don't destroy the fabric of reality, that no idiot summons a demon lord that would rip apart the planet and suck the souls everyone involved. For fuck's sake, I left the eternals unsupervised for a decade because they're almost as old as , and one of them joins the Manhattan project and helps them create the atom bomb. Sure, sotis, if I'm bored, I make sure that organizations don't make too much damage, like I tried to do when I joined SHIELD. But if the people in charge don't want my help, I leave. I have better things to do than stopping them from making stupid decisions. And your father made a lot of stupid decisions, especially in the way he raised you. But his idiocy with his dealings with SHIELD are what got him, and your mother killed."

Tony Stark froze at my words, "What did you just say?"

I stayed silent at this, and he continued, "tell , what happened to my parents? Who killed my mom?"

There was no harm in pointing him to the right direction, "Hydra did. Your father was dangerous, but he was also a golden goose for SHIELD, or more appropriately for Hydra. He tried to recreate the super soldier serum that he was so obsessed with, and Hydra wanted it. They got their best assassin, the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed friend of Rogers that they saved and turned into their little puppet. He killed your parents and took the serum your father was working on. Fortunately, the serum made the recipients dangerously unstable, so they froze the test subjects sowhere in Russia."

"Hydra killed my parents?"

I nodded. He stood up and tried to punch , "And you did nothing?"

I caught the punch easily and raised an eyebrow, "It's not my place to do anything about it plus I had far bigger problems to deal with at the ti. Not to ntion that the only thing I could have done would be to personally kill every single Hydra agent in the world and while I could do this, I would be targeted as a serial killer by every intelligence agency in the world. I would rather no one know of my existence, as I thrive in the shadows, and if I'm dealing with a serious threat, they'll probably think I'd be responsible and target anyway. You mortals think yourself so advanced, so grown up, that you don't deserve my oversight, or my protection. It's why I'm retiring in the first place. Every single aspect of my role has been divided onto different group. I pass the torch onto you, the Avengers. You are now in charge in dealing with technology based threats and aliens that go past Odin's protections of the planet. I'm done fighting for you. I have a much bigger problem ahead of , and I don't have ti for your foolishness. If you choose to quit your role without any replacents, I will not step in to save you anymore. You're on your own."

Tony tried to punch again. This ti I dodged, but the man yelled out, "And you said they were your friends!!"

I calmly answered him, "You're so angry with . But you, yourself, are doing nothing about the main problem. You could try targeting Hydra. I have already started their downfall starting with the world security council. You can either wallow in your betrayal, in your despair, or you could find the people responsible and make them pay. I just gave you a start and the direction. Whether you choose to do this alone, or with your team, will be your choice. As I said, I'm washing my hands of this. This is your father's doing, it would be poetic for his son to fix his mistakes."

I teleport back to my mansion, leaving a confused billionaire. I was barely gone for ten minutes, and the girls were still sitting around, talking. I sit back down on the sofa, "Sorry girls, Stark was being annoying. Now, where were we? Oh, right! What have you girls been up to while I was gone?"