Argentina.

It was late at night, and there were hardly any pedestrians on the streets. Dim streetlamps miserably illuminate narrow sidewalks, and houses with lights on both sides are illuminated with hideous silhouettes.

A fashionably dressed blonde beauty walks leisurely down the dark street with one hand in her denim trouser pocket. She kept her phone to her ear and chattered about trivial topics with the person on the other side of the phone.

The manhole cover on the masonry road was pushed open from below and slowly moved to the side. The unkempt woman with unkempt black hair crawled out from underneath. She was covered in dirt, filth from the sewers, and the coat could barely be seen to be white. She crawled out and looked left and right, her eyes quickly locked on the woman who was talking with her back to her.

She got out, put the manhole cover back on, and then hurried up behind the blonde woman, and pressed her shoulders to turn her around.

Perhaps it's her dirty, messy image and the quiet backdrop of the night that is so reminiscent of some old-fashioned horror movie that the blonde screams the moment she turns her head to see her. The woman in white had to try to reassure the frightened lady by putting on a friendly expression as much as possible and saying in English, "Please, I just need your phone." ”

Rumble!

The lid of the sewer shaft that she had covered flew high like a tank cannon from the inside, and a pillar of fire rose from the sewer like a dragon rising vertically. The lid of the shaft, which had been heated to a red soldering iron, fell from the sky and was severely deformed when it fell back to the ground.

The woman in white lost her patience and yelled "give me a damn phone" and punched the blonde in the face, violently dodging the phone. Then she shouted "Run", and the woman hurriedly turned around and ran away.

Time is running out. The woman in white muttered incoherently, and with her trembling fingers she operated the phone as fast as she could, dialing a string of numbers. She put her phone to her ear and said something very quickly, but the voice was drowned out by the sound of explosions that followed. The ground exploded with a thud, and red-hot steel bars stabbed out of the ground. A shadow came out of the flames, it was a hot man, his skin glowing red, as if every muscle fiber in his body was burning.

The woman pressed a button on her phone hard, and saw the words "message sent" pop up on the screen, and couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

"Thank God." She said.

The man raised his hand. Boundless golden flames erupted from his palm, instantly engulfing the woman's figure. Thousands of degrees of heat evaporated her in an instant, leaving only a charred pit in the ground.

***

Tony Stark impatiently swept the contents of the lab table to the floor, and then crumpled a set of new armor design drawings on the floating screen in front of him, and threw them into the trash basket icon in the corner of the interface.

This is the thirty-seventh design he's vetoed these days—just after he's come up with it.

It's not enough, no matter what way Iron Man is going to be far from what he wants. It's true that he's a genius, and his inventions are a generation ahead of the world, but that's still not enough. After all, the current level of human technology still has a limit, and no matter how hard he racks his brains, he can't use this limited material and technology to make Iron Man match God.

"Maybe you should take the captain's advice, sir." Jarvis instructed the robot to help him clean up the messy parts of the equipment on the floor, and said gently, "You may need to rest." ”

Tony sat irritably in his chair and didn't speak.

As he told the captain, he was running out of patience.

It is obvious that Iron Man is still too far away to protect the earth and resist all kinds of highest-level crises. But he can't do it, but someone else can.

Black Knight.

The first time I met that guy was when I was fighting Aldridge Killian. The Desperate Virus made him realize the limitations of Iron Man's technology for the first time, and it was also the first time he was defeated head-on. However, in the face of Iron Man's completely powerless opponent, the Black Knight sent Killian away in three or two strokes, and it was as easy as playing.

If that time was just an indirect comparison, then the one at the Avengers Tower was much more intuitive.

Ultron took control of all his armors in the Avengers Mansion and attacked together. In the face of so many sets of Iron Man armor, the Black Knight dismantled all the armor he was proud of one by one like chopping melons and vegetables. There's even the Hulk, which was not finished at the time, but it already has the basic abilities he had in mind. However, the anti-hulktop armor, which was equipped with multiple reactors and gained extreme horsepower, was still only single-handedly taken down by the black knight. This shows that the regular armor on the Black Knight has obtained the same - or even stronger - horsepower as the Hulkhead, and it also shows that the opponent's technology has surpassed Iron Man in an all-round way.

And finally, the most recent one in Asgard. Tony and Thor teamed up against Loki, but there was no room for them to fight back in Loki's hands. To be fair, Loki is indeed the most formidable foe he's ever faced since becoming Iron Man. That kind of dominating oppression is completely different from any enemy so far, and this is the first enemy that makes him feel that there is "no point in fighting", and it is a gap in strength that cannot be bridged by any tactical strategy.

Then the Black Knight came forward, and this time with an even more divine set of armor. He used that suit to fight Loki in the dark, and it was difficult to separate. Tony didn't even know if this guy was still human.

So yes, he was stimulated. He needed great power more than ever.

But after more than ten days of continuous efforts in the laboratory, it was clear that he was not going well.

He didn't know what it took to take Iron Man's skills to that level.

"Sir," said Jarvis, "you have an urgent message. ”

"Take it in." Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily.

The line was connected, and a woman's voice was heard through the lab's stereo surround speakers. Her breathing was scrambled and her voice was short, sounding like she was talking while being hunted by a hungry wolf.

"I know you probably don't remember me, Tony, but I'm Maya Hansen, and we've met. And also...... I am the designer of the Desperate Virus. To put it simply, there are two pieces of bad news here. First, I may be dead. Second, the Desperate Virus is gone. ”