TONY AND YINSEN worked furiously to com-plete their project. Tony’s blueprints showed a huge suit of armor, powered by his Arc Reactor. The armor was large and thick enough to keep whoever was inside it protected, and it was fitted with simple but effective weapons. The reactor should have been able to power it long enough for Tony and Yinsen to make a clean getaway.
But as the suit began to take shape—the chest plate intact, the legs operating—even the captors, who didn’t know much about science, began to suspect something was up. The materials that the duo were developing looked nothing like the Jericho blueprints. The captors stormed into Tony and Yinsen’s cell and demanded an explanation.
Tony and Yinsen explained that it was a very complicated project. Building a missile was not easy. The enemy guard was not buying it.
“You have till tomorrow to assemble my missile,” the leader of the enemy unit snarled. Then he stormed from the cell and locked the two engineers inside once again.
Tony and Yinsen worked more furiously than before, and in a matter of hours it was ready to use. Yinsen quickly helped Tony suit up in the clunky armor. It looked like a huge iron tank, with a medieval-style mask and makeshift munitions. As soon as Tony was suited up, he made sure to stay out of view from the surveillance cameras to avoid arousing suspicion. It worked, with the captors noticing that Tony was missing right away. They rushed down to the cell to investigate.
The guards called through the door to Yinsen, asking where Tony was. But they were speaking a language that Yinsen wasn’t familiar with. Yinsen called out to them using the few words he knew in order to hold off the men, but they threw open the door to storm in.
A huge blast rocked the entrance to the cell the moment the door clicked open. Yinsen and Tony had rigged it to buy themselves time in the event that they were interrupted while assembling the armor. The blast rocked the compound, and the remaining enemy troops stormed down to the cell. Tony and Yinsen could hear the approach of their stomping feet and rattling ammunition as the two men anxiously finished preparing the suit.
As the soldiers marched closer, Yinsen realized that he and Tony would not be able to power up the suit before the men arrived. “We need more time,” he said. “I will buy you more time.…”
He grabbed a machine gun from one of the fallen guards and stormed out of the cell, hollering. The soldiers were taken aback and held off approaching the cell. But they soon located Yinsen and surrounded him. Every one of the soldiers’ guns was pointed at him. A chorus of clicks sounded. Just before they were about to shoot, the lights in the compound cut out.
Tony’s suit had powered up, and in doing so had drained all the electricity in the complex. The soldiers scouted the area, not sure how or if to proceed. They carefully made their way down the corridor, feeling their way as they went. Some eventually arrived at the cell. They entered apprehensively, unsure of what awaited them.
And that’s when Iron Man attacked.
Tony stepped from the darkness into the few shafts of light that made their way into the cell. Glimpses of the suit were visible, but the soldiers couldn’t make out exactly what they were up against. As Tony stepped from the room, that all changed.
Tony’s armor was a monolithic suit of metal, fitted with special devices. The enemy soldiers fired relentlessly, but their bullets couldn’t penetrate Tony’s suit. They ricocheted off and boomeranged back toward his attackers. Tony walked, undeterred, toward the open air, and as he did more and more soldiers descended upon him. But no matter their number, they couldn’t stop Iron Man from moving forward. The heavy suit caused Tony to walk in a lumbering way, but that didn’t prevent him from getting where he needed to go.
When he was almost at the exit, he found Yinsen. But he was badly wounded and laying on the ground.
“Yinsen!” Tony called out. “Come on! We’ve got to go! We have a plan, we’ve got to stick to it.”
“This was always the plan, Stark,” Yinsen said with the little bit of life he had left in him. “Don’t waste…Don’t waste your life, Stark.…” This plea was the last that Yinsen uttered.
Tony turned angrily toward the exit of the cave that housed the compound. He lumbered forward and stepped outside. As soon as he did, the enemy unleashed all their fire on him. He must have been hit with hundreds—or thousands—of rounds of ammunition, but nothing penetrated his armor. When the enemy paused their fire, Tony challenged, “My turn,” and lifted his giant metal arms.
Streams of fire flowed from his suit, igniting the air around him and forcing back his opponents. Tony turned his streams of fire toward the Stark Industries stockpile that the enemy army had amassed outside the cave. The weapons began to burn, and Tony knew it wasn’t long before they would detonate. He lifted a flap under the cuff of his armor and pressed a red button. The suit began to rattle, and then it shot like a rocket high into the air, arcing away from the site. Tony could hear the ammunition exploding below him. He was a few hundred feet in the air when he felt the suit begin to sputter. Tony flailed his arms and legs, struggling to find some way to stay aloft. Then the power cut out altogether and Tony plummeted down into the vacant expanse of the Afghan desert, far from where anyone might find him.