Chapter: 51
-Matt Murdock-
Matt Murdock stood by passively, feeling like this press conference was going to be a train wreck. It could even be almost as bad as when Tony Stark decided to shut down his company's weapons division without consulting any of his shareholders. If Matt had been Tony's lawyer at that time, he would have advised Tony against doing that, just like he had advised Layla against not being quite so gung-ho about this. At the end of the day, though, all he could do was advise her. She was an adult… by a few hundred years, apparently. She could make her own decisions.
"Oh hey there, Agent Coulson. It's been a while." Matt 'watched' as Layla addressed an obvious spook of some kind with familiarity. They were currently inside a trailer that Layla had rented for this press conference. Originally, they were planning on hosting it at a small local theater, but they quickly realized they were going to need more space… a lot more space for all the people that were going to show up. When the news broke that the Angel that had been media silent for so long was finally going to speak to the public—people went ballistic. New York was flooded with more tourists at the moment than at any other point in history. Every hotel in the entire state and even those bordering New York were completely booked.
"Layla!" "Layla!" "Layla!"
With his enhanced senses, Matt could hear the crowd of possibly a million people cheering for his client even in this soundproofed trailer. It was frankly mind-boggling for him.
"Hello again, Layla," Agent Coulson replied. Matt could sense that the agent was a bit annoyed at her. "Thanks for giving SHIELD a heads up about this press conference you were hosting," he said with a bit of sarcasm.
Layla scoffed. "I'm not a member of SHIELD, and while I would like to have a friendly relationship with your organization, I don't answer or report to it." Layla said. "To be fair though… I wasn't expecting this many people to show up." That was an understatement. There must be almost a million people crowding the park.
"Yes… well, the National Guard is currently on standby, by the way. That tends to happen when the city is on the verge of the biggest riot the country has ever seen." Coulson deadpanned.
"I'm not going to cause people to riot!" Layla said indignantly. "I was just planning on talking about my acquisition of Oscorp and the new direction I plan for the company," Layla explained.
That's not all you're going to answer though right?" Coulson asked her.
"That was all I was planning on speaking about." Layla said. Matt grimaced. While Layla would have been the perfect client by sticking to her rehearsed script–that would only work if she was literally anyone else. Unfortunately, she was an actual Angel and people had traveled far and wide to hear her answer some biblical questions. Everything else they probably couldn't care less about.
"If I can be honest, Miss Layla," Matt decided to cut in. "At this point, no one will really care about any of that." This situation had blown far out of proportion and gone way beyond a typical press conference. Matt wouldn't be surprised if there was a cult forming among the crowd as they stood in this trailer talking. Who was he kidding? She probably already had a dozen cults following her at this point…
"Exactly," the secret agent added with a nod.
"What? Then why are we even doing this?" Layla asked. "You and you're paralegal Karen are the ones who told me to stick to the script."
Matt let out a sigh. "I didn't think it would have gotten this out of hand." Matt admitted. He had mentioned before to her how popular she was, but even then, he had seriously underestimated her apparent fame.
"Maybe we should just call off this whole thing then." Layla suggested. Matt felt panic at hearing that!
"No!" "Absolutely not!"
Matt and Coulson exclaimed at the same time! "All these people came to see you, Layla. If you don't show–there will absolutely be a city wide riot." Coulson explained.
"Ok. Ok. So what? I just skip over Oscorp and start answering questions about whatever else people want to know?" Layla asked.
"Don't skip completely over your acquisition of Oscorp, that's the whole reason for your press conference in the first place. Just know that people won't really care to hear about it for more than a minute or so." Matt said. And wasn't that some of the weirdest advice he had ever given to a client…
"No one's going to care that you took Osborn's company from him. The guy's an asshole and very disliked by the public." Coulson added.
"You know how hard it is to literally be dying of a rare disease and still be loathed by the public? The answer is really rare. Dying is the ultimate sympathy card people can play, and Norman Osborn is such an asshole most people are glad he's kicking the bucket." Matt explained. As a lawyer, he'd seen this card played a few times in the courtroom. Most of the time, the people playing it were just faking though. Matt himself cherished all life and vowed to never take it. There were some men, however, that even he struggled to not change his code for. Norman Osborn, in some instances, was even worse than Fisk. His company routinely violated environmental regulations by unapologetically dumping toxic waste wherever they pleased. Whenever they were caught, they just paid a small fine and kept doing it. At one point, the entire city had to drink bottled water for 2 months because Oscorp had ruined New York's water supply. So yes, Matt wasn't going to be shedding any tears for the man once he passed.
"Your lawyer is correct, Layla. Director Fury sent me here just to make sure that you answer people's questions but don't freak them out too much. We're already expecting some rioting just from the sheer number of people in the city right now, but we can still reduce the damage." Coulson explained. "And absolutely don't talk about 'the you know what!'" Coulson added with no room for argument.
Matt wondered what the 'you know what' was. Judging by the Agent's tone, it was extremely serious.
Layla stared into space for a moment before she pouted indignantly. Matt had noticed that she tended to do that from time to time. Maybe as an Angel she was seeing things that mortals couldn't? That was his best explanation for her odd habit anyway.
"I wasn't going to mention that! I know how it would look if an Angel popped in front of the world and announced the possible end of days to everybody." Layla said to them.
"...What?" Matt asked nervously. "What end of days!?"
"That's classified, Mr. Murdock."
"I'll tell you later!"
Coulson and Layla said at the same time. The former glared at the latter. "Hey, he's my lawyer, he deserves to know," Layla said to the Agent.
"Fine… But no one else. We can't have any hint of it getting out before we have our solution ready to go." Coulson said.
Matt heard footsteps rapidly approaching before the trailer door was thrown open. Karen Page, his assistant and their firm's paralegal, burst through the door. Matt could smell how flustered and stressed she was. "Holy shit, I've never seen so many people in my whole life! You've got to get out there, Layla, before people start tearing Central Park apart." She sputtered out.
"LAYLA! LAYLA! LAYLA!"
Now with the trailer door open, the cheering had suddenly grown so loud that Matt was starting to have trouble 'seeing.' The wave of people's voices was blanketing out everything else for him. He felt nauseous.
"Alright, I'll be heading out there to address all my adoring fans." Layla said jokingly as she stepped out of the trailer. Matt moved to follow her, but he stumbled and almost tripped due to his new lack of 'sight.' The crowd's extreme noise was blinding for him. Thankfully, Matt's 'world on fire' returned peacefully when Agent Coulson was kind enough to shut the trailer door.
"It's probably for the best that a blind-man does not go out there right now. We don't know how crazy it could get." Coulson said to him. Matt thanked him and agreed.
"You're probably right." Matt said.
"We can just observe this future train wreck on the TV." Coulson said as he picked up the remote. The TV in the trailer was linked to the stage cameras so they wouldn't miss anything. Not that that mattered much. Every news network was probably broadcasting this press conference live right now.
"Before Layla starts, Mr. Murdock, I was wondering if you might be interested in hearing about one of SHIELD's most promising programs."
Matt would be a liar if he said he wasn't at least a bit intrigued. "You've got my attention."
"Let me tell you about the Avengers program." Coulson started…
XXX
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