Tony stared at the transparent glass enclosure housing his salvaged Arc Reactor—his first. He didn't smile; instead, a faint, almost imperceptible curl touched the corner of his mouth. It wasn't a smile of gratitude, but of wry acknowledgement, as if confirming a fact he'd known all along but preferred to ignore: that he wasn't entirely made of sardonic quips and carbon fiber.
He set the artifact down reverently on the edge of his newly rearranged work table.
Leo, unable to contain his curiosity, drifted over. Even though he had witnessed the entire sequence in his previous life, seeing the physical artifact—Tony's literal lifeline now turned into a trophy—still held immense symbolic weight.
Tony caught Leo hovering and pointed a stern, ice-packed finger at him. "Don't you dare shatter that, kid. You can vaporize that blue sports car out there—which, by the way, I still need to fix the roof over—but you lay one magnetic finger on this, and you're buying me a new planet. Understand?"
"Loud and clear, Mr. Stark. Promise not to touch," Leo replied, raising his hands in mock surrender.
Gazing at the weighty, memorable reactor, Leo's mind momentarily drifted, recalling the chilling, ultimate sacrifice Tony would make, a scene etched forever in his memory. It was a strange juxtaposition: this heavy, clunky, prototype reactor, the birthplace of Iron Man, next to the sleek, silent power of the Immovable Golden Body Leo had just discovered.
After a long moment, Leo carefully backed away, returning it to its central position on the desk. He glanced at Tony, who was already hunched over the main computer terminal, his focus entirely consumed by the engineering data. Tony wasn't quite the selfless hero the world would eventually see, but Leo smiled faintly, acknowledging the potential. Not yet, but you'll get there.
Thousands of kilometers away, deep within a harshly lit, dusty tent in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, the work was slow, painstaking, and filled with frustration.
Several grim-faced, heavily bearded insurgents huddled around crude wooden tables. Spread out before them were hundreds of mangled, fragmented pieces of high-density alloy—the remains of the Mark I prototype. They had scavenged the desert for days, digging up shrapnel and fragments from the wreckage site.
They worked from a few creased and stained schematics—Tony's original, rough blueprints that he had carelessly left behind in the confusion of his escape.
After nearly a week of meticulous labor, they had managed to weld together a crude, unsettlingly human-shaped figure. It was a fragmented, skeletal mockery of the armor, riddled with gaps and missing major functional components. Hundreds of smaller, unrecognizable pieces lay scattered around, baffling the technicians.
Standing near the entrance, drawing a slow, deliberate puff from a cheap, unfiltered cigarette, was a hulking, bald man. The severe burn scars on the right side of his head had healed into a tight, dark, weeping pattern.
His eyes, full of a venomous hatred and a dark intelligence, were fixed on the Mark I helmet—the face of the demon who had nearly killed him. He wasn't just observing; he was internalizing the design, visualizing the mechanics, the power—a deep, obsessive focus that promised future retribution.
Twenty days later, back in Malibu, the garage was a hurricane of organized genius.
Tony was perched in the center of his command station—a magnificent, half-circular desk that held eight large computer monitors, all of them saturated with complex telemetry and stress test simulations of the Mark II.
Tony leaned forward, pointing to the analysis graphs on the two central screens. "The flight logs confirm it, Jarvis. Main sensor failure at 40,000 feet exactly. The pressurization system was shot. It wasn't just a random fluke; it was the intense freeze cycle," Tony concluded, tapping a metric that showed a sharp drop in atmospheric heat exchange.
"A truly profound deduction, sir," Jarvis replied dryly. "And given your trajectory, if you plan on ascending past 85,000 feet and maybe attempting a low-Earth orbit, we definitely need to rethink the external heat dissipation and exhaust vent configuration. The current system cannot handle sustained thrust outside the lower atmosphere."
Tony glanced at the three screens behind him, which displayed the Mark II's structural data. He winced internally, recalling the WHOOMPH that marked the violent death of his grand piano.
"Forget the minor adjustments. Contact the team at Sith Corp. I need an immediate material spec change for the entire outer shell. We're switching to the gold-titanium alloy composite—the same material we developed for the Seraphim military satellite,"
Tony commanded, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a true breakthrough. "This material ensures a vastly superior strength-to-weight ratio and excellent cryogenic resistance, which should solve the icing problem entirely. Get it done."
"Confirmed, sir. Gold-titanium alloy, highly resistant to thermal and kinetic shock. Would you care to review the preliminary structural renderings with the new density metrics?"
"Show me everything!"
The computer screens immediately shifted, displaying intricate structural component diagrams of the revamped armor design.
Leo walked down the stairs, stretching dramatically. He paused when he heard the material change. "Hold on a second, Mr. Stark. Did I just catch the magic words: gold-titanium alloy? That sounds like exactly the kind of high-quality metal I might be… in the market for."
He beamed at Tony, licking his lips with an expectant look in his golden eyes.
Tony swiveled his chair to face Leo, crossing his arms. "What's the matter, Leo? Did the tungsten alloy suddenly lose its sparkle? Your metal consumption rate is becoming offensively high lately. Just a few weeks ago, you were happily vaporizing a ton every three days. Now? It's practically one ton every twenty-four hours. What exactly are you doing with all that mass?"
"You know my abilities, Mr. Stark. They demand material assistance! And honestly, the higher the quality of the metal, the less mass I need to consume to get the same kinetic output. Tungsten is great, but a man needs to upgrade his diet sometimes!" Leo offered a deliberately obsequious smile.
He wasn't wrong. They had burned through nearly ten tons of high-grade metal in the last few days, mostly tungsten, which, while not as expensive as gold, still represented several million dollars. But Leo genuinely liked Tony; despite the genius's constant complaints and snark, he was fiercely loyal and generous to the few people he considered friends.
"Jarvis, humor the little metal-eating parasite. Order five more tons of gold-titanium alloy and have it delivered immediately. Top priority, zero security clearance."
"Acknowledged, sir. Ordering now."
Tony turned back to Leo, shaking his head in mock astonishment. "Do you even know how ridiculously expensive this material is? The black-market defense contractors would murder their grandmothers for a kilo of this stuff. We're talking—"
Tony paused, letting the silence build for dramatic effect. "Three thousand dollars per kilogram! You could literally eat me out of house and home, you know that?"
The sounds of a celebrity gossip show provided background noise from a large television screen mounted high on the wall, and Tony's attention was suddenly snagged by the visual of his own name plastered across a breaking news chyron.
The anchor was discussing an upcoming charity event. "Tonight, the Disney Concert Hall is a dazzling blaze of red for the Fire Department House Foundation Gala. It's set to be a spectacular night, and the biggest topic of conversation, of course, is the anticipated attendance of Tony Stark, who is slated to present his third major donation."
Tony frowned. "Jarvis, did we RSVP to the Fire House Foundation tonight?"
"There is no record of an invitation or acceptance in your current calendar, sir."
The television continued broadcasting the related speculation: 'Since his, shall we say, inflammatory remarks at the press conference, Mr. Stark has not been seen in public. Some critics claim he is suffering from debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder and has been sequestered for weeks…'
"But whatever the truth is, nobody expects him to make an appearance tonight, especially not after the recent public outcry."
Tony watched with a look of disdainful boredom, though a flicker of annoyance crossed his features. He hated being discussed, dissected, and dismissed.
"Rendering complete," Jarvis announced, pulling Tony's attention back to the screens.
A magnificent, high-resolution 3D image of the Mark III design now rotated slowly on the screen. It was breathtaking: completely encased in a reflective, unpainted gold alloy. It was undeniably powerful, but also blindingly… flamboyant.
"Wow. That is… a bit too conspicuous, don't you think? It looks like a walking jewelry advertisement."
"My sincerest opinion, sir, is that you have always maintained a consistently modest and unassuming style, and this new armor maintains that low-key aesthetic perfectly," Jarvis deadpanned.
Tony wheeled his chair around and walked to the small kitchenette built into the corner of the lab. He grabbed a glass and poured himself a neon green beverage from the electric kettle, which usually held hot water for tea. Just in time, he caught sight of his beloved red and yellow vintage race car parked nearby.
"Right. A little too much flash. Jarvis, let's add a tasteful layer of that vibrant cherry red I use on the '68 Shelby GT. Just the accents, maybe the faceplate and shoulder pieces."
"Indeed. That should instantly restore your consistent, understated profile," Jarvis agreed.
As Leo listened to the exchange, he found himself warming to Jarvis more and more. The AI was a perfect foil for Tony.
Leo's eyes, however, were not on the screen, but on the bright green liquid Tony was now drinking. Chlorophyll juice. That kettle used to hold water for his coffee, which Pepper had complained he drank too much of. The sudden switch to extreme detox—and the visible tremors in Tony's hands as he held the glass—was the unmistakable sign: the palladium poisoning caused by the Arc Reactor core was starting to take hold.
This problem wouldn't be solved until Tony found the documents left by his father, Howard Stark, which contained the blueprints for a new, non-toxic element that could power the fourth-generation reactor.
Leo knew Tony's character: the narcissistic genius with a compulsive need for control. He was a typical narcissist, convinced that his intellect could solve any problem, including his own mortality.
While Tony, as a genius and CEO, had every right to be confident, this confidence led to a profound self-destructive streak. A narcissist like Tony would likely self-destruct if he truly realized that failure—or death—was inevitable. He had demonstrated this perfectly during the palladium poisoning incident in the original timeline.
The core issue remained: Tony's current armor was powered by the reactor in his chest. Could the reactor be externally mounted, as with Rhodey's War Machine suit or Ivan Vanko's Whiplash armor? Yes, technically.
But Tony had vowed not to produce weapons—weapons designed to kill. Did the Iron Man suit count as a weapon?
No.
As long as Tony Stark himself remained inside the suit, controlling its every function, and powering his own body with the reactor, then Iron Man was not a weapon. It was an extension of himself. The core principle was always: Only I am Iron Man.
The suit's essence lay in the chest reactor; without it, the suit was a powerless shell. If Tony placed the reactor externally, anyone could take the suit. It would instantly transform from a private exoskeleton into the most powerful mass-killing weapon in history, one he himself had built.
This existential fear—losing control and creating a monster—was why Tony would never, ever place the reactor outside his chest unless absolutely forced.
"This is a high-tech exoskeleton, not a weapon," he would later assert. "Only I (personally powering and controlling the suit) am Iron Man."
Therefore, even with Leo's advanced knowledge and Metal Control, removing the shrapnel and replacing the reactor now would only exacerbate Tony's paranoia and the risk of the technology falling into the wrong hands. It had to be Tony's choice, Tony's struggle, and Tony's eventual, personal breakthrough.
"Coloring complete, sir. Mark III designation assigned," Jarvis announced.
The screen now displayed the final, stunning design: a perfect balance of deep cherry red on the primary plates (chest, shoulders, and helmet) and highly polished gold on the joints, secondary armor, and faceplate. It was sleek, predatory, and unmistakably Tony Stark.
"I like it. I like it a lot. Jarvis, let's stop staring at the pretty pictures and start bending some metal and painting some gold! Initiate automated assembly and deployment of the coating apparatus."
"Automatic assembly has begun, sir. Estimated completion time, including coating and final diagnostic check: five hours."
Tony stood up, smoothing down his clothes and checking his wrist. He glanced at the television again, a familiar glint of mischief in his eye.
"Five hours. Perfect. Don't wait up for me, baby," he said, addressing the massive, partially assembled suit.
He turned to Leo, who was still observing the Mark III schematic with intense interest. "Leo, you're looking restless. Want to get out of this dusty workshop and have some actual fun? Maybe witness what happens when the prodigal son decides to crash a party he wasn't invited to?"