Synopsis / Summary / Plot
This issue opens by telling us that the tale is set in 3 eras of Iron Man - the beginning with the original lumbering grey armour, present-day New York and a ruined future NY where Tony Stark will face his greatest tragedy.
In the past grey-armoured Iron Man breaks up through a pavement and tells pedestrians to run as he's followed by pale humanoids who are very large (1 of them picks him up in 1 fist to look at him). Our hero flicks an energy ball at his captor's stomach which makes it drop him. He breaks off another 1's leg, seems to down another with sonics, and another breaks its own leg by trying to kick him.
Then a costumed young female appears and takes control of the 3 remaining humanoids. She transforms her stick into a bass guitar and as she plays it the 3 attack Iron Man with giant axes (which they seem to have manifested from their bodies). They punch him through an office and into a multistorey car park and then into an empty cinema.
The female chats to him as he lies gasping for breath. She guesses this must be part of the era when he relied on his armour to keep him alive. It's no fun fighting him in this state so says she'll come back when he's solved his heart problem, suggesting I think that it'll be on an anniversary of the date.
In the present we see a Silver Centurion IM armour advising everyone to leave a restaurant because it isn't safe. An Extremis armour has similarly emptied a club and is watching a pole dancer, commenting that she's got hidden bruises and cracked bones but she still makes it seem effortless. Another armour (which I can't pinpoint) is busy saving an elderly lady from something. Tony Stark is remotely controlling these ...
... while he's hovering in his current armour trying to determine where the attack will come from. He hears his foe playing her guitar and asks his AI KATIE to pinpoint the location but is told it's continually moving. At the last second he realises it's coming from above. But then 1 of the giant humanoids lands and punches him to the ground. His other 3 armours collapse. The girl stands on her minion and announces to the world that she's beaten IM again. Someone watching the news in a bar comments that it was Iron Man's birthday (ie an Anniversary of Tales Of Suspense #39).
Now it's the turn of the future in the ruins of Manhattan. This time the guitarist's playing sends 2 sword-wielding giants against what seems to be plain Tony Stark. But he runs up into the air on energy 'stepping stones' and is then clothed in a giant transparent virtual armour with which he destroys his 2 opponents. But the girl plays again and a giant sword pierces the heart of the 'armour' and Tony within.
However the 'real' Tony Stark now materialises in a virtual armchair and reveals that everything in the scenario bar the 2 people is a virtual construct. And he recreates the giant virtual armour near her and it bends down to pick *her* up in a giant fist.
He informs her (and really us) that New York City was going to be hit by a cosmic flare so he moved it all to a pocket dimension for temporary safety. But the pocket dimension collapsed before he could bring them back. And he's been waiting for her to return again so he could take her guitar, which he figures is what she uses for time travel. She tells him it's only got 1 charge left which she was going to use to return to her even-more-future future.
She tells him she knows what he will use the charge for, to bring the NY forward in time from just before he sent them to the pocket dimension, thus saving everyone including her great-grandparents. Unfortunately for him that doesn't include his own family who he sent to the pocket dimension before everyone else. Stark says maybe he'll choose to save his own family this time, but she says she knows he won't because *she*'s here as evidence. And we see him play the instrument and unruined New York materialise.