ADVANCE CHAPTER AVAILABLE IN PATREON
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"Lazybones, wake up! The sun is shining on your butt!"
"Hmm… Uncle, I don't feel so good. I might have a fever."
"...Oh no! That's serious, I'll take you to the doctor, you'll need a shot!"
"Huh? A shot? No need, I think I'll be fine after some rest."
"Are you a doctor? What do you think will work? Come on, I'm taking you to the doctor."
"No!"
In the early morning, Bucky carried the reluctant Skye on his shoulder, pretending to run fast, making the little kid who was feigning illness to avoid school shriek and reveal her true colors.
The Frank Castle incident had passed for almost a week.
But the investigation was not going smoothly. The two thugs were just gang members, fierce but brainless. Under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interrogation, they spilled everything they knew, but it was all useless.
S.H.I.E.L.D. even dispatched personnel and directly took down that gang.
However, they found that the gang had no connection whatsoever to Frank's past experiences.
They were merely paid to do a job and didn't care who provided the money.
Thus, they couldn't find out who had such a deep grudge against Frank to kill his entire family.
However, the direction of the investigation wasn't completely cut off.
Just when Frank and Coulson felt they had lost the lead and were at a loss, Bucky enlightened them with a single sentence.
The problem still lay with Frank.
There is no baseless hatred in this world. Frank must have done something to provoke the other party, causing them to resort to such extreme measures.
The target was still Frank; his wife and children were just collateral damage.
However, to investigate everyone Frank had provoked… Goodness, even though Frank wasn't the Punisher yet, he had always been a straightforward person who hated evil like poison, unable to tolerate any injustice.
During his time in the military, while performing special missions and even black operations overseas, he had witnessed many corrupt things—scumbags in the military, bullies among security personnel of defense contractors, and incidents of oppressing locals were commonplace.
He had intervened in many matters.
Not to mention cooperating with contractors and the CIA, there were too many things he couldn't stand.
Even after he retired and had a family, he was still someone who couldn't stand evil, and he had taken action to punish wickedness.
For a moment, Frank couldn't even recall how many people he had provoked or how many grudges he had formed; even when filtering for grudges severe enough to hire gunmen to kill him, he couldn't quite count them all.
This would take some time to investigate.
However, this at least gave Frank a direction, preventing him from becoming a beast driven mad by unvented rage.
As for Bucky, he couldn't offer much help for now and had returned to a peaceful life.
Yes, peaceful. HYDRA seemed to have truly ceased its activities, or perhaps it was brewing something big.
And Howard, to appear completely unaware of HYDRA, maintained his usual pace of life, busy with his career, while secretly investigating S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal affairs, which required extreme caution and progressed very slowly.
Bucky wasn't in a hurry. After all, Howard, the genius, was leading this, and he just needed to cooperate.
His goal was to strengthen himself, to become stronger.
Scheming with HYDRA was far less cost-effective than strengthening himself.
If he wasn't the Winter Soldier, but Thor or Captain Marvel, what HYDRA conspiracy or trickery would he fear?
These days, Bucky had been dedicated to fighting crime on the streets, striving to level up faster.
Bucky also spent a lot of time with Skye, helping her gradually forget her previous fears. It must be said that the future Quake already possessed an extraordinary heart; while ordinary children might have suffered from autism due to such an impact, she handled it remarkably well.
Seeing her like this, Bucky, after S.H.I.E.L.D. had completed all the procedures for him, decided to kill two birds with one stone and had them help Skye enroll in school as well.
The little kid was already a primary school student.
But because she had spent a few days living freely with Bucky, enjoying herself too much, she started to dread school even before attending.
After dropping the little kid off at school, Bucky thought it was time to find a babysitter for her.
He was free enough now to take care of her, but it wasn't very convenient, and he wasn't very good at caring for people. He still needed a professional babysitter.
However, there was no online recruitment in those days, so Bucky went to the newspaper office again, placed a job advertisement, and waited for applicants.
…
"Wow, Uncle, this, this is the legendary computer!"
After school in the afternoon, Skye, picked up by Bucky, entered the door and saw a brand new computer on the living room desk—a Compaq 486. Everyone was buying things before Christmas, and Bucky had pre-ordered it a few days ago; it had just been delivered and assembled today.
The little kid was immediately captivated by this novel device.
It must be said that there was a destined connection between Skye and computers. At an age when she should have been interested in Barbie dolls, playing house, and makeup, she wasn't particularly interested in any of those, but instead was immediately drawn to high-tech gadgets like computers.
"Uncle, Uncle, hurry and turn it on!"
The little kid bounced and sat in front of the computer, poking the keyboard with one finger, then the scroll mouse, excitedly waving to Bucky.
Although this computer was considered top-tier at the time, with 50MHz 48B memory, a 512MB hard drive, and a 2D graphics acceleration card, in Bucky's eyes, it was no different from an electronic dictionary.
But this instead made Bucky feel like playing with something new and retro at the same time.
So he went over with interest and pressed the power button.
"Oh, oh, oh! It's on!"
"Oh, oh, oh! There are pictures! Uncle, you're amazing!"
Skye's exaggerated reaction made Bucky, who had planned to say something like "basic operation, don't be surprised," feel a little awkward… Even if he wanted to show off his skills to a future world-class hacker, he didn't mean to show how to turn it on.
However, there really wasn't much to show off with this machine. This computer came pre-installed with MSDOS and an operating system. You even had to execute commands in DOS to enter Windows, and there was no web browser, so it couldn't even connect to the internet. It only had some legitimate software that was not much cheaper than the computer, and some even more expensive.
It didn't even have Minesweeper or Solitaire, preventing Bucky from showing off his 45-second advanced Minesweeper speed.
But even so, Skye watched with great interest; she genuinely found it very amusing, wiggling the mouse for a long time and never tiring of it.
"It's fun, but you can't play anymore. Go do your homework."
"No, Uncle, just a little longer."
"You're lucky you met me. Where I come from, you'd be meeting with the Thunder King sooner or later."
Seeing the little kid already showing signs of computer addiction, Bucky directly picked her up, carried her on his shoulder, and made her go do her homework.
Then he himself… also wiggled the mouse for a long time, not knowing what to do.
Why did I buy this computer?… I was misled by the computer at Howard's place and his self-designed system. People there were already doing human-computer interaction, but the best computer I bought on the market didn't even have Minesweeper.