After abandoning the Ultron Initiative, Tony Stark seemed to have lost his enthusiasm. He no longer even wore his Iron Man suit, and he contacted the Dream Company to ask them to stop producing Iron Man merchandise.
Tony Stark had willingly stopped his superhero activities because he felt that what he was doing now could no longer be called superhero work. He needed to sort out his thoughts.
He also wanted to lie low for a while, to keep the authorities from pushing their luck and trying to get the technology behind his Iron Man suit out of him again.
Nick Fury said little about Tony Stark's decision, and the other Avengers did not meddle either. In fact, they understood him quite well.
Just as the Ultron Incident gradually died down and an idle Tony Stark began planning his wedding to Pepper Potts, an unexpected news story thrust him back into the eye of the storm.
The Daily Bugle suddenly published an article claiming that Tony Stark had an illegitimate son around five years old, whose mother had died after being caught up in the recent Ultron Incident.
The reporter who wrote the article suspected that Stark had used Ultron to silence her, and so on and so forth.
Of course, everyone laughed off that speculation. Whether the story was true or not, even if it were, why would Stark need to do such a thing? They were all media professionals, and naturally knew their colleagues' occupational habit of lying through their teeth.
But the other reporters were still very interested in the subject of an illegitimate child.
Given Tony Stark's old habits, there had never been any shortage of stories about his illegitimate children. Only after he became Iron Man, settled down, and got together with Pepper Potts had