Marvel: I am Iron Man

Stark Tower, top floor.

When Natasha Romanov walked through the narrow corridor and into the restaurant, Tony Stark was already sitting across from her at the table.

"Very punctual." Tony gestured for her to sit in the chair across the table. "I like working with punctual people."

"But I don't like chatting with people."

Natasha sat down in the chair and tidied her copper-red curly hair.

Today she wore a champagne-colored silk slip dress. The dress was extremely simple in design, and its smooth lines and the sheen of the high-quality fabric alone were enough to outline her impeccable figure.

After Natasha sat down, she looked at Tony and said, "So you'd better have something important to discuss today."

Tony cut to the chase: "Alien invasion, global crisis."

Natasha gave a dry laugh: "Haha, that's funny. So what exactly did you call me here for?"

But Tony didn't say anything more, he just stared at her expressionlessly.

Natasha's smile gradually faded: "Wait, are you serious?"

Tony casually fiddled with the table for a couple of seconds, pulling down a pale blue holographic screen. The screen displayed footage that the armor had recently captured.

The mothership, wriggling like a giant worm, surrounded by a flight formation and a host of Chitauri warriors.

After a brief moment of surprise, Natasha's expression turned serious: "When did this happen?"

"Today," Tony said. "But don't worry, I've got it all sorted out. It's just an alien mothership and a bunch of scouts."

only?

Natasha looked intently into Tony's eyes, as if to make sure he wasn't joking.

Why does this person sound like he's just casually dismissing a bunch of small fry? Alien warships and alien armies?

If anyone else had said that, Natasha would have thought it was nonsense.

But considering that this guy named Tony Stark is the most outrageous representative of Earth's technology, and that his Iron Man armor recently crushed a group of Frost Giants—who were also aliens.

So although casually dismissing an alien mothership sounds absurd at first glance, it seems to become acceptable once you consider that it was done by this overpowered guy.

"I need to see Nick Fury," Tony said.

Natasha hadn't recovered from the shock of the aliens—after all, even as a super agent, she had never had the chance to come into contact with aliens before.

She took a deep breath and said, "Chief Fury is extremely busy and has a very tight schedule. If there's anything you need, you can talk to me first..."

Tony interrupted her: "The aliens came for the Cosmic Cube, and they haven't given up. Next time they come, they might launch a large-scale interstellar war against Earth."

Natasha swallowed the rest of her sentence immediately.

She and Tony made eye contact for two seconds, then she quickly got up from her seat.

"I'll make a call," Natasha said with a long sigh. "Chief Fury will be here in five minutes."

It seemed Nick Fury wasn't as busy as she'd claimed. The SHIELD mothership was practically in optical camouflage mode hovering over New York, and upon receiving the notification, Fury boarded his aircraft and immediately headed straight for Stark Tower.

Five minutes later, the automatic doors to the balcony slid open, and Nick Fury strode in, landing on the balcony of Stark Tower.

Tony Stark wasn't actually averse to the character Nick Fury at one time. Back then, he genuinely thought Fury was a remarkable figure, highly skilled in both politics and espionage...

...until the Marvel Cinematic Universe series "Secret Invasion" flushed the character and prestige of this former spy chief down the drain along with the writers' toilet paper.

Fury used to make people think he was playing a grand game, but in the end you'll find that he actually lost the game board long ago.

Fury walked through the door and stood in front of Tony.

"Agent Romanov gave me a briefing. You said there's an alien invasion, and the target is the Tesseract?" Fury asked.

"Pretty much," Tony said. "So tell me where the Tesseract is, Nick?"

Clearly, the situation had become so tense that Fury no longer cared about how Tony addressed him. Fury frowned and said, "You talk like you're absolutely certain it's in my hands."

This wasn't the first time. Fury felt that Tony Stark knew far too much, which made him wonder how many other secrets the other man had uncovered.

He couldn't figure out the other side's intelligence network. Nick Fury was used to controlling everything from the shadows, and in the movies, Fury almost always contacted the Avengers under conditions of information asymmetry.

Fury always gives you the impression that he knows everything about you, but your understanding of him is limited to "one-eyed, wearing a black leather jacket, and talking like a mob boss." This information gap always makes him seem mysterious and unpredictable.

But now Tony Stark gave Fury a vague feeling that he was being controlled. He didn't like it.

"Alright Nick, we're talking about space defense security," Tony said. "So forget all your boring secrecy rules and just tell me, where's the Rubik's Cube? It'll be too late to talk when the aliens come knocking on our door."

Fury's tone remained curt: "This is top secret, Stark. You need to tell me first what you know about the Tesseract and the aliens who want to take it."

Something tells me that you know far more than you say.

Tony and Fury stared at each other for a long time with their one eyes.

After a long pause, Tony slowly said, "The Tesseract is lost, isn't it?"

Fury's eyelid twitched almost imperceptibly.

This is where Fury's racial advantage comes into play—his skin color helps him perfectly conceal the true shock he feels.

Stark really knows everything!

But in fact, Tony wasn't sure until today; he just had this bold guess.

Based on the original movie, Tony believed the Tesseract should be in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hands. However, after a long period of gamma-band scanning and data collection and analysis, having scanned all suspected S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities, he concluded that if the Tesseract were still in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s possession, there should at least be some abnormal gamma fluctuations.

But there was nothing there.

That's why he naturally came up with this conjecture: perhaps the Tesseract is no longer in A.H.I.E.L.D.'s hands.

Fury looked intently at Tony, as if trying to see through the cynical rich kid's eyes.

He used to think that Tony Stark was easy to understand and that he knew everything about him.

But now he realizes he might have been wrong.

"The alien army is coming, Nick," Tony said. "We're facing war, and war requires teamwork. Now, tell me, what's happening?"

After a few seconds of silence, Fury finally confessed.

"Alright, I don't know where you found out... but you're right. The Tesseract did indeed once belong to S.H.I.E.L.D.," he said.

Tony: "Once?"

"Yes, until about last year," Fury said in a deep voice. "Last year, the Cosmic Cube disappeared."