“Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?”
Tony Stark’s Iron Man suits allow him to level up to his enemies and be equally matched in power, strength, durability, endurance… He was never injected with a super-soldier serum and given super-human abilities like Steve Rogers. He was never bitten by a radioactive spider like Peter Parker. He doesn’t have any special skill-sets, acquired by years and years of professional, super-secret spy training, like Black Widow or Hawkeye. He doesn’t even have a huge, green, rage monster alter-ego like Bruce Banner.
Nothing.
It’s his armour that gives him all of his super-powered abilities. His armour is the only thing that offers him any protection in battle. Beneath the suit, he’s just a regular human being. A civilian who made a conscious choice to don that armour ten years ago, to fight evil.
And here he is, ten years later, fighting one-on-one against the most powerful being in the universe.
Every devastating blow dealt by Thanos, Tony’s armour is gradually ripped apart, exposing the vulnerable human flesh and bone hidden underneath.
The one thing that offers his human body any protection, destroyed. But he’s not backing down. He keeps on fighting. He keeps on pushing himself. He knows it’s futile. Knows he is hopelessly outmatched in hand-to-hand physical combat against a Mad Titan with the power of four Infinity Stones.
But he doesn’t stop.
Even while fully exposed and vulnerable, Tony continues to fight. He fights with courage. With bravery. With determination. With desperation. With fear.
He fights with his whole heart.
He fights until he physically cannot fight anymore.
When Tony takes off that armour, or, in this case, is stripped of it, he will still fight with everything in him. He will continue to fight to the very end.
Tony Stark is Iron Man, and he is just as much of a hero without the armour as he is with it.
2087
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