Disclaimer: I do not own Kingsman, or any of the associated characters

Summary: There was always someone trying to hack into something they shouldn't. Half the time, it was Merlin's own staff, competing against each other. Rather than keeping a constant personal guard, Merlin set up a personal alert whenever someone tried.

The Wizard

The remote controlled arm was new (and oh, but the R&D department was going to have fun with it later), but nothing beyond Merlin's skill to handle.

Kingsman, both the tailoring shop and the term in general, had always implied Quality. The best of the best, and their training reflected that. From Arthur and the Kingsman Knights, all the way down to the mildly terrifying cleaning staff, the Kingsman Agency were efficent and very, very good at what they did.

As Quartermaster and Tech expert, Merlin was no exception. He had joined the agency after trying to track some information htat had been delivered anonymously, spent half an hour breaking through some impressive defences, and traced the source back to Kingsman. The then-current Merlin had stopped the Knights from doing anything impulsive or permanent, and taken him on as Emrys, her eventual replacement when the time came. Merlin hoped that he had lived up to her expectations.

He had kept Kingsman three steps ahead of the technology boom, with the help of a top-notch R&D team. The arm trying to hack the Kingsman mainframe might be the best that money could buy, designed by the kind of intellegent mind that cared more about inventing something new than about what it would be used for, but it was still a machine, not an AI. Machines were fast, but they didn't adapt like humans did. Merlin's eyes gleamed with the implied challence, cheerfully bidding farewell to his original plan of browsing Netflix that evening.

The arms' technology was advance, but Merlin was better. It was the work of moments to deflect it into the shop records back when Kingsman was still just a tailor shop. When the practice of record keeping had truned from paper to digital, Merlin had hidden the records that were no longer required behind countless firewalls and other protections, to draw the attention of potential hackers. The real Kingsman files were equeally secure, if not moreso, but their protections were far more subtle.

While the arm was trying to break into the heavily-encrypted tax statements of the 1800s (and accountant notes complaining about the price of cotton now that the Americas were in rebellion, and there was just no pleasing those bloody Colonials) Merlin got to work on a quiet virus to neutralise the hacking and return the favour.

Merlin smiled lik the cat who had got both cream and canary as information began to scroll across his screens. Carefully checking for trojan virus's as he went, he began to make notes on what he found.

Golden Circle seemed similar in name and function to Golden Triangle, a drug cartel that Kingsman had been keeping an eye on. That bore looking into, as did the matter of who or what, exactly, this 'Statesmen' was. The internet claimed that it was a liquor company, but liquor companies focused on a single type of liquor, and there were too many references to Tequila, Brandy and Champagne - in context that had nothing to do with alcohol - for it to be anything but a front for something.

He would have Lancelot look into it, then send her and Galahad in a few days, after Eggsy returned from meeting his girlfriend's parents. Eggsy had never quite got the hang of dealing with people who looked down on him for his background. He would restrain himself, for Tilde's sake and to avoid being arrested for assaulting royalty, but he would almost certainly be in the mood to blow something up afterward.

Ooh, blackmarket missiles and another plan to take over the world via global pandemic. Well, Kingsman couldn't be having with that, now could they? Merlin casually hotwired the missiles to target the location of Golden Circles larger drug stockpiles, and set up a piggy-back program that would keep him informed about any further developments.

Eggsy should be emerging from the sewers in a few minutes, along with some creative invective, and Merlin had everything he needed from the arm. Disconnecting it from the system and the mangled taxi, Merlin's signet ring made quick work of the arm's wiring and circuits. He stuffed it into a duffle bag to cart down to Avalon (the collective name for the R&D staff) the next morning. It had been a while since he bought them anything new to play with, and they got sulky when they got bored. Besides, there was no point in bypasing an opportunity to improve their own tech.

Humming quietly to himself, Merlin got to work.

All the lovely new information kept Merlin busy well into the next night, with a brief break for Eggsy's briefing and Roxy coming down every so often to make sure he ate. She joined him again early in the evening, keeping up a running commentary on Eggsy's dinner with the Royals. Galahad might be a touch rough around the edges, but he thought on his feet and made use of available resources, even if those 'resources' were Roxy's upbringing and google skills on whatever the King of Sweden was expecting Eggsy not to know this time.

Yes, Galahad was definitely going to be in the mood to shoot something by the time he got back. Best to aim him in the direction of something that they actually wanted blown up.

Although it wouldn't be the storehouses, given that those had just been blown up by Golden Circle's own missiles. It was such fun to envision the screams of rage from whoever's plan had just been foiled. With luck, that person may take care of Charlie for them, given the ex-candidate's involvement.

Well, that still left investigating Statesman, and tracking down Golden Circle in person. Time to find whatever new toys Avalon had come up with and get Galahad and Lancelot kitted out.

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A/N: Poppy clearly had some excellent tech people on hand, but are you seriously trying to tell me that Merlin didn't have some sort of safeguard against hacking? After V-Day, Harry's death and Arthur's betrayal, Merlin didn't look into ways of preventing agents from poking into files they didn't need to know about?

Not buying it.

As always, reviews and constructive criticism are much appreciated. Flames are not.

Thanks,

Nat