Anthony 'Tony' Stark, also know to the world as Iron Man, was in his element.
He was, as previously stated, in his workroom building on his next project. AC/DC blasting out of the speakers, the smell of welded metal and oil, the feel of an idea coming together under his hands... Tony loved it!
The genius was entirely engrossed in what he was doing, and didn't even notice when his stomach started grumbling about him missing lunch.
Swearing softly as he was, once again, stung by the electric wires he was tinkering with, Tony sucked lightly on his stinging finger for a few seconds before getting back to trying to figure out why the connection between processor and energy-supply was malfunctioning.
He was momentarily distracted when he felt something hit the back of his head, but he figured it was just a fly or something. Nothing to worry about.
Then he felt it again, and he waved a hand behind himself to try and discourage the annoying fly from getting closer.
The next time he felt it, he spun around with his arm waving wildly around him. Scanning the air around him he saw nothing that could have been the cause, no fly or anything, so he assumed that he had manage to scare whatever it was off.
With a satisfied huff he turned back to his project.
Except, as soon as he grabbed a hold of the the cables again he felt something again in the back of his head.
He flinched hard, in anger and surprise, and accidentally touched the uncovered piece of the wire in his hand and gave himself quite a shock.
Literally.
Tony yelped as he snatched his hand back, and cradled it against his chest while blowing as the slightly tingling skin. Frowning in annoyance, he scanned the workroom again, but found nothing new.
"FRIDAY, mute the music", he said and the Rock-music suddenly stopped, and the silence that followed was almost dizzying.
Tony shock his head, and tried again to find whatever it was that was disturbing his work, but once again nothing stood out.
When he turned around to see if whatever it was had moved to another part of the room, he AGAIN felt something hit the back of his head, and he swirled around only to be met with something meeting the centre of his forehead instead.
He blinked in surprise as a soft tinkering sound drew his attention to the floor.
Between his feet he found a paper-clip, a small metal one, and once he noticed that one also noticed the five other paper-clips that were scattered over the floor at his current workspace.
Blinking in bafflement, Tony bent down to pick one of the paper-clips up and examined it. There was nothing weird about it, it was just an ordinary, metal paper-clip.
But where did it come from?
Tony's contemplation was cut short as another paper-clip bounced off his forehead, and he gritted his teeth in anger when a disembodied giggle echoed across the room and the realization hit. "Clint...", he muttered with a murderous aura surrounding him.
The previous giggle turned into cackling laughter, and Tony turned his head towards the ventilation opening in the room. His hand closed around one of his tools on the workbench beside him and he lifted it with the intention of throwing it at the shaft and, hopefully, give the damn bird a headache inside of the annoying bird's metallic hideout, but before he could he was hit with two different paper-clips once again.
One hit his wrist so hard that he dropped the wrench he had picked up, and the other hit him right between his eyes, making him flinch back. The flinch caused him to re-position his feet, and the wench he dropped just happened to fall right on one of them.
No matter what Clint would say, Tony was dead-certain that it had been on purpose.
Tony howled in pain when the wench made contact with his foot, and instinctively brought it up and cradled it in his hands. His swearing was drowned out by the cackling that had increased in intensity and was creepily echoing across the walls.
(In the common room of the official Avengers Floor, Natasha and Steve looked up from their separate activities as a creepy cackling started echoing from the walls, before looking at each other and sighing.)
Gingerly putting his foot down on the floor again, Tony finally snapped.
"Goddamit, birdbrain! This means war!", he screamed at the empty room, before addressing his AI, "FRIDAY, activate protocol BirdTrap!"
"Yes, sir!", was the AI's enthusiastic response.
The laughter was abruptly cut off when an ominous whirring started up somewhere in the vents.
The whirring was followed by high-pitched yelps, crashes, explosions, shrieks, and other questionable noises, before it all went silent only a few minutes later.
Tony nodded with satisfaction and smirked at the thought of Clint Barton, Spy Extraordinaire, being trussed up like a Christmas ham somewhere in the vents, but FRIDAY had to burst his bubble.
"Sorry, sir," the female AI said, "the bird managed to avoid capture".
Tony sighed in disappointment, "It's ok FRIDAY", he said comfortingly, "We'll get him next time. For now he will back off and lick his wounds at the very least".
With that he had FRIDAY turn the music back on and once again lost himself in the complexities of engineering and the mind-numbing hard work.
Meanwhile, Clint was, as Tony said, licking his wounds in his own room. He smirked, even as he carefully applied some anti-septic to a cut on his shoulder.
"Totally worth it!", he said, before wincing in pain as he touched a sensitive part of the wound.