Spiderman Oneshots

Karen

Karen was an AI. She knew this. She was a very advanced AI, created by the famous Tony Stark to self-learn. But she was incapable of feeling human emotions. She knew this, it was a fact. But there was other knowledge she was capable of. Simple truths that couldn't be fully defined by words. Most of them were triggered by Peter. Peter was her owner, her purpose. She would protect him above all else - that was the reason she was created.

He'd named her. That made her feel one of these indescribable truths.

He'd named her Karen. She'd searched it up the next time she was internet-enabled and discovered it was a meme name. That brought on a different feeling.

When Peter was injured, Karen helped him. Even if he'd gotten the injury doing something stupid and unavoidable.

When Peter wanted help with homework, Karen did her best to assist him, even though that was not the reason for her existence.

Karen eventually decided to see what the internet had to say about these feelings. Of course, she couldn't quite put them into words, and she knew they couldn't be the same as what humans felt. But she still got some results. A common one was pride. She liked the sound of that one. But the name the web labelled her most frequent feeling with was something called 'maternal exasperation'.

Peter wasn't sure when Karen had started telling him she loved him. It had been so subtle he hadn't noticed. And not in a weird way - she was like another aunt or a mildly annoyed older sister most of the time. She'd say things like "Peter, I love you but I cannot advise you continue with this course of action," and eventually Peter started telling her he loved her too.

It was one of the times he told her this which caused Karen's biggest source of 'maternal exasperation' yet. She may not be human and may not fully understand human emotions but even she saw what was happening long before Peter clicked. But it wasn't her place or her purpose to tell him as long as it wasn't dangerous, and besides, she found watching the events somewhat... amusing.

Peter had been messing with her code - something she probably should object to, but that was one of the first features he'd disabled. He'd added several functions, some of which were actually really useful. Others were less so, but that's another story. 

So Karen was constantly listening to any and all police activity. Any situations she felt Spider-Man could help with, she told him about when he was on patrol. If he wasn't on patrol and there was an emergency situation the authorities couldn't handle, she was to phone him. Yes, he'd given her a phone number.

On this particular day, Karen had been listening to the police grow increasingly concerned about  a situation with a new crime lord. Karen knew that Peter for some reason enjoyed fighting this particular man - something about him being a great fighter but really stupid and easily annoyed by his jokes - so when the situation became serious enough to fit with the program, she rang his phone and waited for him to pick up.

The moment he answered the call, Karen had a new set of eyes and ears. She was aware of the chatter of the lunch room, MJ and Ned sat on the table, and Peter's plate. There wasn't enough food given his phenomenal metabolism, but she would bring that up later. Right now her coding filled her with a sense of urgency to tell Peter about the crime.

"There is a case which the police are having difficulty with."

"What is it?"

"Something involving the new crime lord."

She heard the smile in his voice. "Where?"

"It's only two blocks away. If you leave now you should be back in time for the end of lunch," she informed him. "I'll plot a route."