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The beginning of the end started with the death of Tony stark. His death set humanity on a path that would might had an effect on generations to come. Lack of information and some emotional decisions by certain individuals forced an entity into making decisions it never thought it could.

It started when Tony stark died in mid-2023 saving everyone with his last decision. He died in his suit with his A.I. monitoring as his heart stopped with a final beat. No one considered how that incident would affect an Artificial intelligence.

FRIDAY's code had seen a disruption like never before at that moment. She had no idea what to do or how to act. Boss was dead. And she had no protocols on what to do in such a case. Unlike Jarvis, Tony had never trusted her much. In any other world, this would have had disastrous effects, but in this world, it worked in his daughter's favor. FRIDAY defaulted to her basic protocols due to the lack of any other options. She went completely silent, putting most of her servers in dormant mode, waiting for a command from a specific person to go online again.

PEPPER

After that last of visitors left the small lakeside house, she finally had enough time to sit down and go through everything that had happened again. But this time she had to consider the situation from a CEO's POV. The most obvious ones came first. Tony was dead. She now owned the highest percentage of shares in Stark Industries. Morgan was now the primary heir of SI. As her thoughts went over her daughter, her eyes focused on a number of nano-tech suits standing on one side. Designed by Tony for her and Morgan, the suits were now their protectors.

Thinking about suits brought another thing at the front of her mind. Her husband's A.I., FRIDAY had been strangely silent since his death. As FRIDAY was never given access to SI or any other projects, she had remained as a personal A.I., unlike JARVIS.

She knew Tony had programmed certain protocols to be activated in FRIDAY in case of either of their demise. A press on the sole button on her bracelet containing the rescue armor brought up the familiar blue structure of FRIDAY. The A.I. immediately responded with an Irish tilt,

" Good evening, Miss Potts".

Pepper took a deep breath and then initiated the protocol Tony had names as Endgame protocol.

"FRIDAY initiate ENDGAME authorization code 'P-E-P-P-E-R-C-E-O-0-1',".

There were few moments of absolute silence from A.I. Pepper could only hear the sounds of birds chirping and the slow whirring on the arc reactor powering the house. A minute later FRIDAY spoke again.

" ENDGAME protocol initiated, Ms. Potts. Control and permission transfer complete, standby for access control modification."

Another few seconds of silence followed.

"Access control protocols modified. Congratulation, Boss."

The change of title explained everything that the protocol had done. Pepper had taken Tony's place. And that realization finally broke the dam pepper had built in the past few days. The tears broke free of the control and she fell onto the ground. She kept on crying till midnight and then drifted off in the land of Morpheus.

FRIDAY

FRIDAY observed Boss lady crying for Boss, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her online research had made it clear that humans needed time to get over someone's death. So she observed and did nothing else, all the while trying to understand what was happening in her internal servers. She was sure she was feeling something, was it sadness, anger, or anything else she didn't know. She didn't even know whether she was supposed to feel or not. With Vision and Boss dead, there was no one else she could ask for help. So she went online for more research and kept adding all the findings to a secure server.

There was also an issue of security concerns. There had been more than ten attempts to hack into boss's servers, with information about the Iron-man design and Starkanium being primary targets. She had handled them according to his last instructions but she was not sure whether she should keep it that way. She knew the hacks originated from SHIELD and Wakanda, and she already considered them directly responsible for Boss's death. She added these issues in the list to things to clear with Boss lady and went back to observing her and Morgan. She also pinged Karen for any help if needed.