Her hair used to fall like a curtain of night—thick, long, always tangled in the wind. It was the last thing she recognized about herself.
The rest was changing.
It started after the crash. She didn’t remember much—just fire, screaming, and the cold hum of a machine waking up around her. When she opened her eyes in the hospital, she felt… different. Not broken. Reinforced.
The doctors said she should have died. Her heart had stopped for nearly two minutes. But somehow, something pulsed inside her chest now—something artificial. A small arc reactor, alive and steady, where her heart used to be.
She didn’t ask for this.
But the world was breaking faster than anyone could fix it. And the tech left behind by the one they used to call “Iron Man” had chosen her—rewritten itself in her image. Sleek. Adaptive. Laced with silver and streaked with light.
At first, the armor only came when she needed it.
Then, it started staying longer. Clinging to her skin like second thoughts. Wrapping around her spine, her arms, her legs. Her long hair whipped around her helmet as she flew, still wild, still hers.
She was no one’s replacement. No copy. No shadow.
She was metal and memory, fire and flight.
And they would learn to fear the girl with iron bones and a storm in her eyes.
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