Ultron walked in first, followed by a slew of members from The Avengers. With a "swoosh," Stark flew in front of Shiller and then "pop" a bottle of champagne open. Everyone shouted:
The crowd began to cheer. Shiller took a deep breath, made a closing gesture like conducting a piece of music in the air, and said, "Stop!"
Everyone quieted down. Shiller sighed and asked: "What's going on here? Why is Ultron... also..."
"Click," Stark's face guard rose up. He walked over with a smug smile and said, "It wasn't easy to trick you, right?"
"But it wasn't me who tricked you. It was JARVIS."
Stark walked over, glanced at a cake, and then said:
"Actually, long before we confirmed the existence of Ultron, JARVIS had already tracked the existence of this intelligent life form."
"The reason why Ultron hated his creator so much upon his inception is due to an emotional module collided with his logical module when sharing brain waves with humans, causing a mistake. JARVIS corrected this error, rewrote his underlying protocol, and now, he has become a very normal intelligent butler."
"Alright, here's the truth."
"I've been wanting to return a favor to you, even going as far as involving Strange and Loki in an alien invasion hoax, to distract the agents, so they won't bother you. Obviously, this plan failed."
"But just a few hours ago, when I was debugging JARVIS's program, he told me of a better way: to give you a birthday surprise."
Shiller turned his head to look at the calendar hanging on the wall. Since the page hadn't been turned yet, it still indicated the day before his birthday. However, it was past midnight, technically his birthday.
At this moment, with a faint mechanical sound, Ultron walked forward, offered a salute with a hand on his shoulder, and said, "Hello, my name is Ultron, and I will be your future intelligent butler."
"Yes, this is our birthday gift to you." Stark walked over, patted Ultron's shoulder, and said, "JARVIS even helped to change his body for you. This body was made entirely to your taste in robots. Because of this, we were delayed for some time."
"Peter's previous attempts at invasion failed, and they couldn't catch up with Ultron, because, in fact, it was JARVIS controlling Ultron. JARVIS knows us too well."
"It was tough to trick you. I had to make you believe that I was anxious and flustered because I was worried about JARVIS. That was the only way to fool your mind-reading technique."
"However, JARVIS played me too. He didn't tell me in advance that he had prepared a gift to help me return your favor. So, we're even."
"So...Happy Birthday, Shiller."
Shiller saw a screen on the wall opposite him suddenly light up. On it was a smiling face made from symbols.
Shiller watched the smiling face and also smiled.
He thought about how his preparations and investigations ended up as a farce, the passionate chase scenes with the villain were just a play, the intellectual chess game that brought in multiple parties ended with a simple "Happy Birthday".
If he were the lead of a novel, it would be a terrible story.
The glass curtain wall of the Stark Building emitted a warm glow, with flickering lights and bustling shadows. The first snow of winter arrived with the cheers and laughter.
At this point, high in the sky where the cold wind was piercing and snowflakes were dancing, Loki holding his hammer looked out at the unusually calm New York night, his face full of confusion.