Avengers: Altruism [N. Romanoff]

8. Gold-Titanium Alloy Man

CHAPTER 9
Gold-Titanium Alloy Man

"What the hell happened last night?" Claire ran into the room, standing out with her mismatched attire that didn't correspond with the suits and ties around her.

Phil welcomed her into the room, providing no explanations to why she had been called in, which was not wise as Claire had built up conspiracies by now, the media fuelling her imagination. She stopped to stare at a familiar ginger smiling at another familiar face.

"How the hell did they survive that explosion? Phil, what the hell is happening?" she was losing her patience now, an irritability was vastly growing amongst her attitude.

"'Iron Man'. That's kinda catchy, got a nice ring to it. I mean, it's not technically accurate, the suit's a gold-titanium alloy..."

"Excuse me, make yourself comfortable," Phil gave Claire a smile that suggested he really did not want to be happy, that he wasn't happy, and he walked over to Mr Stark and his newspaper.

"Here's your alibi."

Claire's eyes wondered around, from the TV with James Rhodes on it, over to the table with small snacks aligned ready for her sticky fingers. She slowly made her way over, trying not to be noticed with her VIP lanyard and skinny jeans, preventing an immediate spread of more rumours that she was not prepared for.

Silently she wished she had her cat for company around all these big names, but externally she showed confidence and a look of boredom and disinterest as she trailed her fingers around the plate of cheese croissants.

"You were on your yacht."

"Yeah..." Mr Stark was not going for this idea.

"We have port papers that put you in Avalon all night, and sworn statements from 50 of your guests."

SHIELD comes prepared... they really thought all of it through. To Claire she believed they still needed a media witness, someone to spread the lie across the web in a faster way than this interview could. They needed Tony to believe the statement himself... she needed to figure out what exactly they were hiding from the world, from her, and why it is so important that even she was here. Was it a coincidence they brought in a hypnotist when they were trying to convince the world that nothing went wrong?

"See, I was thinking we should say it was just uh- it was just Pepper and me, alone on the island," the playboy came out, and so did Claire's playful grin as she eavesdropped her near-future client and listened to Pepper pull off a medical strip from his eyebrow in reaction to the comment.

"That's what happened," Phil insisted.

"All right."

"Just read it, word for word." Tony was and is a trouble maker, how much do they have to do to get him to listen?