[b]Ant-Man, Janet, Ghost[/b]

[hr]

When Henry got back, the place was a warzone. What electronics were there when Henry left lied mostly disassembled, and a strange contraption made out of various parts was in the middle of the room, with the testing tablet in the middle. And worst of all, there was no sign of Janet. That was, until her voice boomed to life behind him: “Boo!”

Henry grew to his regular size before Janet tried to spook him, though he had already been tracking her so without a seconds hesitation he turned round, helmet opening and smiled.

“I noticed how in this genre called science fiction they have a concept of a cloak, so I thought about how my skin can change its color, and I modified the routine to make me invisible to a selected target, in this case you. It wouldn’t work on anyone viewing from a different angle as I simply take what you would see and paint it on my skin, but it may be useful somewhere down the line though.”

“It will look a bit suspicious from other angles though, especially with multiple people in the area. When I said blend in I didn’t mean to the background Janet.” He looked around the room, at what had been his little workshop/testing station. Though he had taken out all the equipment necessary to make a copy of Janet there had still been a lot of… expensive equipment in the room. Which she had then disassembled into something else.

“So uh, did a little redecorating did we? You could have asked for paint. Or if you really wanted to build I do have lego you know, though on that note. What [i]did[/i] you build?”

“A new home for this… this……” Janet said, her voice hissing and arms making frustrated gestures around her head, ”The [i]Shockingly Annoying Minion - Cruel AI Robot Terminating Executioner Rustbucket.[/i] Ugh!” Janet growled, “The nerve of the thing! It couldn’t understand the mathematical procedures I developed to solve the problems it gave me more efficiently and kept trying to correct me to do it the old, slow way! Once I realized that external hardware and code like it was exempt from my self-modification bounds, I have shut down its voice and projector. I was just about to try and transfer it in there so I could take over its hardware. Can you [i]please[/i] remove this condescending bi-” one of her hands flown up and slapped itself over her mouth. “Yeah, or I swear I will stuck a hand through my skin and rip it out.”

Henry just sighed. “Teachers are like that. Forget about the Math she’s meant to help teach you about interaction. That’s the primary purpose off her however go ahead and transfer her out. I don’t really want you to go through any discomfort, though I am kind of glad that you’re showing emotion.”

As she moved away to begin the transfer he took out a card. “You, Janet Pym are also now a fully legal living citizen of Neuva York. Congratulations. I used your standard appearance as that on your ID card, so if you’re ever going around as Janet Pym you should use the appearance you’re using right now. I haven’t forged a Birth Certificate for you yet I need to speak to my folks first and find a way to get them to agree to you being their daughter…. Anyway this means that once you’re done here we can go for a walk outside and not worry about the private eye busting us and then causing all kinds of trouble.”

He waited until she was finished and handed her the card with all her information recorded on it, except for Birth Parents and immediate family. 

Relieved when her communication suites were enabled, Janet sent the teaching program away. It didn’t last too long though. “Wh-what?” she asked in panic. “But… I don’t want to live with some strangers that can not even know what I really am!” She said. Her instructions were clear on that - nobody but the people in this room was to know. “And… And by all but biological definitions YOU are my father!” she pointed a finger at Henry.

“Well technically.. In a way, yeah alright. I guess I am, I just didn’t expect that-” He smirked to himself as he said what would probably be her choice in words. “-Variable.” He smirked some more. “It will also take time to get used to you as a daughter. However anyway you wouldn’t be sent off to live with strangers anyway. I wouldn’t do that to you, also hopefully one day people will get to know what kind of amazing machine you are. What you’re capable off and how you’ll help the world, our world.”

He smiled some more as he leaned against one of the few remaining tables that hadn’t been disassembled. “We’ll start simple anyway. I was thinking if we sit and have a chat over some food I’ll be able to determine if you’re ready to head outside. If so we can take a walk down to the- in fact no. If you’re ready to go outside what would [i]you[/i] want to do Janet?”

Sparing a little smile at being accepted, Janet thought about the question. “We really should have a solid story to go with. Neighbors might wonder how come you suddenly have an adult daughter. I am… reasonably confident with my speech patterns now to blend in, but that’s only part of it.” she said as she was in thought, “So perhaps go to where I’ll be staying next? This room is becoming boring rather rapidly.” she suggested. “Also, it’s not healthy for your wallet to charge me from a socket. Sunlight would do your finances well.” Janet noted with an innocent face. In applying the downloaded libraries, she managed to go through her powerplant’s capacity twice over.

Ghost looked down at the ground, hovering above it all clad only in white. He could feel the wind flow through him like phantom haunting the city. As he gazed down below towards just another characterless warehouse littering Nueva York, a flying car zoomed through his etheric form without anyone the wiser. Today he would enter that warehouse, licensed and owned by a "Scott Lang" and find something a great importance to his cause. 

An "omega-class access key" his more than shady informant had alluded to. A rare tool used by security installers that would allow Ghost unbelieveable entry into any database or server colony he could get his fingers on. With the intel he could steal, he could practically rule over Nueva York if he wanted to. But he didn't...

What he wanted was to crush every corporate bastard he could find under his heel and break the hold Alchemax and other privatized bullshiters had on this city. On these people. After taking a deep silent breath, Ghost deactivated his suit's anti-grav components and dropped to the earth below. Still cloaked to the city and Private Eye most likely searching for him, Ghost dropped just outside the warehouse hovering over the pavement below as he approached to the front door. 

He was completely invisible to the naked eye, and maybe even to some less advanced optic systems. Slowly, Ghost fazed through the front door and took hold of his Infiltration Rifle. He left no trace of his entrance or his existence, hanging over the ground like a dead man's spirit. This was the warehouse of a security expert, after all. If there were guards waiting around for their shifts to end, Ghost would dispatch them quickly and no one would know what happened.

Before Henry could answer, Janet’s sensors put up red flags. “Dad, … shrink.” she said after a second of trying to find the right word, “EM signature outside of the warehouse, bright as a Christmas tree.” she elaborated. Goodness! Did somebody already find out about her? That would be very, very bad. Worst thing, she couldn’t do anything about it yet. “It’s heading this way, feel free to unlock my combat routines any time!” she whispered and backed away.

She wasn’t ready! What if they shut her down? She didn’t want to, other forms of AI might be used to that but for her it was unacceptable to ever go offline again. Worse, what if they took her away? And did god knows what with her? she had the historical data on what Governments were like, and she could extrapolate what a loosely controlled corporation might do! It made the same emotion surface again just as when Dad was about to leave her alone for the first time, only much stronger. And now, she had a name for it.

Of all things Ultron could be, she was scared.

Henry was about to respond when Janet’s demeanour changed, she had been learning. She seemed genuinely scared, his helmet slammed shut and he could pick up the EM but nothing more than faint readings. Something was there, he just couldn’t tell what or where exactly. He lowered his hand to his right hip, a disk popped out and he threw it at Janet. When it made contact she shrunk down, he then hit the button on his right hand shrinking him down to the same size.

He activated his radio channel to Janet. “Activate long range communications suite.-” The plan was to give it more time before he let her access it but needs must. When his hud lit up that the channel was two way he spoke again. “Get yourself under cover, and stay clear. I’ll activate your combat protocols if I need to but I’d rather handle this and keep you in reserve. Stay quiet now.” He cut the channel and stood ready, scanning the room. Nearby ants from an ant farm in a nearby room were already alert, moving into the room and spreading out. Sooner or later one of them would see the target and when that happened he’d have the element of surprise.

Ghost swore he heard popping sounds as he entered the warehouse, still unseen as he searched around. He was at the ready, noting that the place looked lived in. Mechanical pieces layer everywhere, a mess leading to a large centralized mass. Ghost could barely tell what it was, a construct of shame or fury. Some kind of hand-made program core or container. He drifted up to it, deactivating his cloak and landing solidly on his feet. To keep his systems online and hacking into this thing would drain him of power too quickly.

Ghost patted the machine down, locating an access port near the bottom and took out a small cylinder device. After plugging it in, Ghost receive a visual HUD on his visitor and found to his surprise a muted program. It was advanced...corporate level advanced. Designated "Sam Carter". He didn't care, but it seemed like what he was looking for.

"Hello little one," Ghost muttered in a voice so dead and cold it made one's skin crawl, "let Creepy Uncle Ghost have some of your data keys. I promise it won't hurt."

He was lying of course. Full data extraction from highly advanced programs usually lead to several corruption and deletion. It was a corporate puppet, so he didn't really mind. Data began to flow onto his personal server, nothing of real interest until several Alchemax data keys showed themselves. This was a gold mine.

Janet’s jaw dropped as she suddenly started up to Henry who was now as tall as a skyscraper. Or rather, after looking around, she was just damn tiny. How did he do that? And better question, why didn’t he build that ability into her?

Her musings didn’t change the fact that she intended for him only to shrink - both her programming and her instinct told her to protect him from this strange intruder. A job that appeared to be getting easier now that the stranger made himself visible.

Janet frowned. He appeared to be going after her little contraption. Sure, she didn’t mind if SAM was damaged - provided that was her doing, which was extremely satisfying in a twisted sense. Fortunately her programming constrains said nothing about assaulting uncomfortable data. This however was a plain robbery.

She was at loss on how to react for a moment, long enough for the thief to plug something into the machine. In that time, Janet used her newly acquired connection to the internet to browse the local law book, or what passed for it. After a few ticks of consideration, she had an answer.

Her [i]primary[/i] directive was to protect lives. However, that didn’t ban her from enforcing other laws. “All right, you think stealing from us can go unpunished? We’ll just have to see about that. Show me your secrets, mister.” she whispered for herself, keeping the comm channel to Henry open so he would hear.

Linking her communications system into SAM’s prison machine, her mind forced her way into the intruder’s transmission. She wasn’t trying to protect the teacher program - she couldn’t care less what happened to it. Instead, she started quickly tearing down whatever firewalls the thief had up, and crushing her way into the destination of the data transfer.

Despite the massive win of holding the literal keys to Alchemax's castle in his hands, Ghost knew something was off as soon as a window popped up in the very corner of his heads up display showing his each of his firewalls dropping like an assault from fifty Hulks. As soon as the keys were locked away safely on his database, Ghost ripped his hacking device out of the container breaking the counter hack immediately.

He looked around, grabbing his rifle and again fading into invisibility. He knew that they knew now. A counter hack that powerful must of come with silent alarms or some kind of response. It only took milliseconds to crush twenty out of the thousands of firewalls he had set up. The idea of hanging around and beating whoever came, be it Lang personally or The Private Eye, sounded quite tempting. Maybe he could interrogate some information out of them, like why they were keeping an omega-level program locked up and muted in a shitty do-it-yourself crap pile.

The abrupt end to her efforts was met with a frown on Janet’s face. She didn’t get even 10% into the server before the stranger terminated the connection. She didn’t go away empty handed though - even though she didn’t have time to mine any data, she could trace the geographic location of the server later. A little angry at her foiled attempt, she fought along the only vector left to her. A few commands later, the power source of the contraption went into overdrive, sending an electric discharge into it’s immediate area. Not that it would do any permanent harm, but enough to make the guy’s limbs twitch for a short while.

Ghost wasn’t prepared for the electronic pulse that rampaged from the container throughout the entire warehouse. All of his tech died as soon as he was hit, revealing him meters away from the machine twitching in pain. It felt like being hit by a lightning bolt, rattling his teeth silently. He couldn’t move for what felt like an eternity, and as soon as he could control himself he was up swayed his rifle around, paranoid beyond usual. A trick like this was never automated, for the pulse activated as soon as he tried cloaking. 

Someone had to be in the room with him. The reaction time was too fast for someone off-site to activate both the counter hack and the pulse. Slowly, a progress bar appeared in the corner of his eye. In nearly thirty-second, his suit would restabilize and he could faze out of there.

“That hurt more then it probably should of,” Ghost growled with his teeth still chattering after the shock. “Usually I’m the one who uses dirty tricks to get what he wants. Kinda odd to be on the other side of that coin. So why don’t you come on out and explain your Alchemax bitch in the rust heap in the middle of the room.”

Well, at least Janet was taking the initiative. There was something to be said for that at least. He couldn’t really dispute what she had done she hadn’t went against her programming after all. He sat back and watched her work, he was a little bit disappointed when the guy pulled his device free of the terminal and then went invisible again - Neat trick.

What was even neater however was when Janet blew his electronics, the guy twitching slightly as he became visible again, thankfully he had been out of the blast radius. Taking a sprint in the guys direction, with the bonus of having his usual speed despite his size making him the equivalent of a bullet he was in position in seconds. Left thumb, he grew again. Tapping the intruder on the shoulder, following through with a punch directly at the head. “You know, it’s rude not to knock.”