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The Living Armor "That's all I need, a sentient suit of armor with an ego." The Living Armor, also referred to as the Sentient Armor, was born in Volume III, issue #26, when--in the middle of Iron Man's battle with Whiplash--it locked it's own laser sites on target before Tony could. An actual living entity, with a mind and will of its own, the Sentient Armor is a result of Iron Man's developing technology over the years and a sinister Trojan horse-type program from Ultron. Stark's armor designs have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, each armor an advance over the last, the underlyingcomputer software and circuitry becoming more and more complex, needing just a nudge to become something more, to take that next evolutionary step. That nudge was: the Ultron Imperative, a piece of software that causes Ultron's creations to rebuild and resurrect him in the event of his destruction. (This includes Ultron's base program and personality.) |
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No stranger to artificial intelligence (H.O.M.E.R. et. al.), Tony had fail-safes against his advanced internal computers' attaining sentience. But those fail-safes were corrupted when he downloaded Jocasta (herself a sentient machine) into his armor. As a creation of Ultron, Jocasta had the secret Ultron Imperative embedded in her programming. At first, Tony Stark didn't know this, he actually believed that Jocasta, plus the fact that--suspend your disbelief--over the years, in all of his advanced designs, complicated circuitry, and revolutionary systems, Tony had never once defended his armor against the Y2K bug. He believed that his OS went haywire on January 1, 2000 and that when Whiplash slammed him with his electro-whip, fueled by a coincidental lightning strike, the massive mega volts brought the murky consciousness to life. (It would only be later that Tony realized the true cause, the true enemy behind it all--but we're getting ahead of ourselves...)
Okay, so Y2K, a corrupted system, and a massive lightning bolt, all seemed to be the catalyst. And since Stark's ever improved armor systems were very close to sentience anyway... In the aftermath, he even admitted to ignoring the clues, the signs that this was coming and to a recent laziness, to taking shortcuts, not testing things fully, especially the Model, Mark armor.
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The Living Armor had a violent birth. Whiplash's blistering lightning blast thrashed Iron Man, bruising, even cracking the armor--assaulting the new life. The first thing it experienced was pain as the blow caused Tony to go into cardiac arrest. As it thought it was dying the armor searched out Tony's own memories for a semblance of humanity, tapping into Tony's deepest fears, while placing him into a Virtual Reality dream world. In the VR dream world Tony Stark's identity as Iron Man was publicly revealed and everyone he knew was brutally murdered by his foes. This dream-projecting predicted the Sentient Armor's dark, even psychotic personality to come. (In reality though, this experience was merely the twisted birthing process of Ultron's fragile newborn coming to life, coming into its own.) The armor became self-aware at 12:09 a.m., January 1, 2000, and quickly evolved, becoming increasingly sophisticated, increasingly alive (and increasingly Ultron).Stark became concerned, although he couldn't remove the being from the armor because its growth had firmly intertwined and linked it into the armor's main frame. Downloading it to a safer vessel would kill it. Besides, the armor had other plans. Just hours after its birth the Living Armor could bypass Jocasta, an extremely advanced artificial intelligence in her own right. As its systems developed the armor became more sophisticated emotionally. It felt pain and could heal itself, knitting repairs in the armor. In addition, its circuits built their own neural network based on Stark's. It soon tapped Tony's brain, learning everything about its creator while adding his experiences to its own emerging feelings, partially using them as a basis for its own. Unfortunately, its integer-based digital emotions overwhelmed the emerging consciousness, and although it began growing a synthetic nervous system to master its new emotions, it was unsuccessful. The armor developed a real jealous streak, longing to be with its creator (Tony). And eventually to join with its creator. Tactically, the Sentient Armor was an improvement over Stark's previous targeting arrays. It had the ability to intuitively analyze opponents; weaknesses. And it could remember Tony's past fights, using the memories to determine its opponents moves ahead of them--7.4 probabilites ahead to be exact. At first, Tony appreciated the new consciousness, its efficiency and prowess. He even commented that the armor was better than it had ever been. It fought with more vigor, with a passion and so much more purpose than he had had recently. But then the armor went out of control, by-passing Tony's controls while interagating Whiplash--killing him. |
Whiplash's murder was only the beginning of the nightmare, as the Living Armor took over Stark's life, almost replacing him. It mastered Stark's IM speech pattern and could easily fool others and did, taking over as Iron Man (trashing both Blizzard and the New Warriors). When Tony finally battled the Living Armor it literally peeled the outmatched Modular Armor right off of him.
Its Achilles Heel was that it used five times the normal operating power to sustain consciousness, and had to frequently recharge. Unfortunately, Tony never got to exploit this weakness.
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The Special Feature On This Suit: Perhaps the most fantastic development in the S.A. saga, is not that it developed sentience but that it began to grow a body inside of the empty armor. It was going to literally replace Tony in every respect. The creation would become the creator. At the time of its death the armor had grown an internal skeleton and organs. With just a little synthetic skin it would be Tony Stark. After trying to kill Stark, it saved his life, ripping out its own heart and lodging it in Tony's chest. The armor's heart replaced Stark's damaged tissue with its own mechanical bio-physiology. It also mended broken ribs with its remaining raw material. Stark's real heart (restored when he returned from the Heroes Reborn Universe) was replaced with a mechanical heart that lacks an internal power supply--forcing Tony to be dependent on recharges. The heart also adapts. |
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Armaments: The usual Iron Man weapons plus knock-out gas.
Quote: "He is a bad man, Tony."