The hug doesn't last much longer than a few minutes, but Peter can practically feel waves of comfort and caring flow off of Connor. For the short time, he had known the boy, Peter could already tell that there was something in Connor's past holding him back from truly being himself and comfortable around the small group of friends that Peter usually hung out with.
There was that curve of Connor's face that made Peter warm up with joy, he hadn't really seen Connor smile often. There was a particular smile that just didn't look right and just looked fake or uncomfortable in Peter's own opinion. Connor ended up staying and ignored future texts coming in from Hank, as he could wait for now.
Dr Banner arrives early the next morning, when Peter is sleeping once again, and notices Connor, giving him a small friendly smile. Connor doesn't have that scent that screamed 'Im a teenage boy who hasn't had a shower in over 24 hours' so Bruce just assumed that Connor had somehow managed to have a shower.
Although Peter, on the other hand, was starting to smell a bit of perspiration. Bruce cut open the bandage on Peter's right arm and cleaned the wound, before telling Peter that he should have a shower to freshen up a little, and proper clothes would be available to him when he came out of the shower. Plans had already been made for sleeping arrangements, with the entire compound agreeing that Peter should be able to sleep back in his own bed in the room he occupied in the building, on the condition that Connor also stay at his side.
They laid down an extra mattress that seemed comfortable enough by the edge of Peter's bed, and placed sheets for Connor down. It was left unsaid what was going to take place, but everybody silently came to a mutual agreement, that Connor would stay until they deemed Peter stable enough to function on his own.
Connor was given a pardon from school, and nobody was even worried if his grades would suffer, as all they've seen from Connor's performance so far were perfect marks in every subject available to offer at the institution.
"Where is Mr Rogers, Dr Stark?" Connor asks, in the communal kitchen of the compound. He's preparing waffles for Peter, after finding that Peter did in fact, like waffles. Tony was sitting on a barstool that was on the outside of the kitchen island bench.
"He doesn't live here you know," Tony mumbles, mostly to himself. His eyes dart across the newspaper headline. Apparently, since Spiderman hadn't been out in a while, everybody was worried, and many conspiracy theories had been making their way up online forums, and the top trending video on youtube was a theorist ranting on about how being Spiderman would literally kill a person unless they had powers.
Tony answers the question anyway. "He's on a mission with Nat, some boat hostages or something." Connor nods on while chopping strawberries in half diagonally. He places them strategically on the plate along the two Belgium waffles. Connor takes out the syrup bottle and the carton of heavy whipping cream. Within a few minutes, the cream is whipped and also put on the plate.
Connor hand writes a note, saying that he's gone to his other job and that he'll be back before the day ends.
Tony's about to ask where Connor is going when he notices the SHIELD logo embroidered onto the left breast pocket of Connor's suit jacket.
Tony puts two fingers along the bridge of his nose. "You don't have to work there, you know. I'll raise your pay, whatever you want. I'm not comfortable with you going out and working for that slimy agency. What's up with them all of a sudden wanting you to go now? They haven't called you out in like weeks."
Connor shrugs, and leaves behind the plate of waffles on the breakfast bar, with a neat cursive that says 'Peter' on it. He takes the motorcycle keys off the key hook, within Tony's sight, and Tony doesn't say anything, allowing him to ride the sleek, black and discreet motorcycle to go to work in.
It's not the headquarters based in the capital city of New York, but rather a facility in the suburbs which he has been assigned to. Connor walks through the door with a confidence that told everybody that he knew exactly what he was meant to be there. The chip reader recognises the chip sewn inside of Connor's work uniform, and the man sat down at the front desk, redirects Connor into the locker room, where he is to get dressed into a SWAT-like style of uniform.
The uniform wasn't heavy, and well within Connor's carrying capacity, and he fell into line with the other agents on duty, who were tasked with the transport of Loki's sceptre. Connor looks at the eight digit identification code that had been placed on all of their uniforms, reminding him of the production code each Android from cyberlife would get given to them from the moment they walked out of the assembly line in the factory.
Each person in the team is also coincidentally a Hydra agent as well according to their codes. They get on their SHIELD issued motorcycles and follow a black SUV which holds the extraterrestrial sceptre in it. The trip isn't delayed by anything, and they eventually find their way to the military airport base that is going to take the sceptre to a research facility in a small European country called Sokovia. Connor commits the exact coordinates to his long-term memory.
Now that he knows where the sceptre would be, there's an advantage for him to get a jump on whether or not he can make the tear in the universe to send Hank back to their universe of origin. The tesseract had apparently been taken back to the realm of Asgard by Thor and his brother, but Connor was sure he could do something to get Hank back to their dimension.
Connor quickly composed a message in his mind to send to Hank via email, that they were getting closer and closer to returning home with each passing day, and he'd just made a huge leap in knowing where the sceptre was transported and now kept. A hydra facility disguised as a SHIELD commissioned one.
All Connor needed now was an excuse to be on site there, and he goes through all possible ways he could. He could hack into the database and transfer himself there under the guise of being a reinforcement sent to help guard the sceptre itself, but only the most trusted senior agents could go there, and even Connor couldn't hack in trust.
There also was another voice telling him that if he were to be based in the Sokovia facility, that would mean leaving behind Peter. Connor had no idea where this sudden apparent attachment to Peter came from and reasoned that Peter emotionally needed him, and Connor just didn't want to risk a human life.
Yes, that was it. Connor didn't care, he was just a machine, right? All he wanted to do was leave this mess with as few casualties as possible. Also, this school thing was holding him down, maybe he should just take the test that would let him enter twelfth grade, and graduate already. He wouldn't be very useful if he had to spend six or seven hours a day at a school. Connor made up his mind and decided that graduating would be the next part of the plan.
Connor made his way back to the Avengers compound in the suburb of New York. As he walked through the door, he found that the kitchen he left had been deserted and a little note saying that everybody that had stayed at the compound last night was in the training room, and even Peter felt up for a spar with a few of the others. Connor walked into said training room and quietly analysed all of the fighting patterns and preferred styles of each person.
After a while, Peter asked Connor if he was up for a small spar, and Connor waved his hand in dismissal, not really wanting to get into a fight right now, but Peter insisted. Connor once again dismissed him, and Peter was starting to think maybe Connor didn't really think he could go up against his own friend, so instead Clint volunteered to go up against Connor, as they were both SHIELD agents after all.
Connor finally relented after considering what would happen if he refused to spar. Peter would probably keep on insisting him annoyingly to spar. Clint prepared himself in an offensive position, and the fight was over by the end of the first minute, with Connor, somehow ending up being the winner of the situation. Clint got back to his feet, slowly, and quite a bit puffed. The fight was swift and smooth, with Clint only stumbling a few times against the seeming prodigy.
Tony broke the comfortable silence.
"Hey man, what the shit was that?" Connor shrugged, and Peter immediately spoke next, in an excited but hushed whisper.
"Dibs fighting Connor next!"
The asset looked on through the trees and aligned himself more comfortably in the position he was in, a rifle in hand. The strange boy who had been interacting with the rest of what SHIELD called, the Avengers, was waltzing down the deserted street, late into the night. In the outer suburbs of New York, the streets were empty late at night, so this was an ideal situation for the assets next task.
Once he had his rifle trained on the boy, he fired. In a turn of events, at the absolute last millisecond, the boy jerked his body, making the shot go through his upper abdomen rather than his head like it was intended. The asset swore but took off as the authorities would have been alerted of the gunshot by now, even though he had used a silencer.
If the asset had just stayed a few seconds longer, he would have noticed the blood seeping from the boy was, in fact, a vibrant blue, rather than the blaring red he'd come to be familiar with over the years of experience in this area of taking down people who Hydra deemed a threat. Yes, this boy was a part of their ranks, but the hit had been ordered because nobody could really trust this boy who had come from out of the blue, entirely dedicated to their cause.
It seemed… suspicious to many of the senior agents at Hydra, and as they could take no chances, this boy was a liability, demonstrated by his closeness to the Avengers.
Connor immediately noticed the Thirium pulsating out of his inner workings, and gave himself an estimated fifteen minutes before enough Thirium to have leaked out that his system would no longer be regulated by the amount of Thirium that would be left in his system. In an instant, he went through all possible future situations that could play out and decided that the best possible chance for his continued functionality would be to go to somebody who was extremely versed in engineering.
Somebody who he could trust, somebody who had the time and money to come up with something that could replicate thirium like effects. Somebody who didn't need a manual to know what they were doing, just a quick scan.
He needed to go visit Tony Stark immediately.
In record time, Connor hopped onto a nearby motorcycle and jumpstarted it without a hitch, getting to the Avengers compound in twelve minutes flat, probably breaking a few speed limit laws on the way. One hand was putting pressure on where the Thirium was escaping, and the other hand was doing the mundane tasks of opening up the Avengers compound door by making his fingertips replicate and take the unique shape of Peter's own fingerprints.
Tony was still tinkering in the lab on the lowest sub-level of the compound, regardless of the extremely early in the morning timeframe, and noticed immediately when Connor rushed into the room, limping, and holding down a wound with the vibrant blue liquid dripping out.
He freezes when Connor puts his arm against the desk and swipes all of the materials on the desk off, even breaking a bottle of beer while he was at it. Connor situated himself on the desk and started spewing the information like crazy.
"I'm Connor, the android sent by cyberlife. I've been shot and am losing too much Thirium to function for much longer, I have 120 seconds before I go through the protocol shut down. You need to replicate the Thirium inside me and give it to me ideally through an IV drip, if not you can just feed it to me like any other normal person would drink something-"
"Wait up! Oh my God Connor, hold up! You said you have 120 seconds right? Explain everything you can in that time."
Tony is already on the other side of the room gathering all the tools he'd think he'd use.
Connor sighed and began using the remaining 100 seconds left to try to pass enough vital information over.