Revelations

This has to be some kind of sick, messed up joke. Peter didn't move, waiting for the hero to tell him that, but it didn't happened. The static body of the Number One Hero indicated one of two possibilities; the mask hid his true expression, or, he was telling the truth. Somehow, Peter had a Quirk.

"Um, could you say that again?" The boy asked quietly, more to himself, as if coming out of a haze. He stuck a finger in his ear and twisted, trying to ensure it was cleared out.

"You said that you were a normal kid," The hero went on. "But my sensors scanned an abnormally high energy for someone 'Quirkless'..." He made air quotes with his fingers, as if he thought the boy was messing with him.

"But how's that possible!?" The boy asked, assuming that was true. "I-I never developed a Quirk, the doctor said there was no way! I even have two joints in my pinky toe." He said, raising his foot as if to prove his point.

There was a rumor that Iron Man supposedly had an X-ray feature in his HUD. The hero stopped for a moment, staring at the boy's raised foot, seemingly confirming the boy's assumption. He really was analyzing his skeleton...

"Well, that part's true..." Said Iron Man, his attention back to the boy's face. "So what? I'm not a doctor. Does it mean something?"

"W-well, there are studies that show a correlation between the pinky joints and the probab…" The boy began to recite the information that had been haunting his life for the past ten years, until being interrupted by Tony.

"Okay, okay… I get it!" The hero says, raising his arms in surrender, anxious for the boy to settle down. "Like I said, I don't have a PHD in 'Quirk Studies'. But one thing I know for sure, the energy in your body is not normal!"

"How do you know that!?" The boy asked, his head full of doubts. Do I really have a Quirk? But what is it? What can I do? Could I become a hero now?

"Because that's the same energy that I-" The hero for a moment seemed to be irritated with the boy, but suddenly his tone changes "...That I produce…" he said, almost like a whisper Peter couldn't hear.

Just then, his armor began to shake slightly; the eyes, which normally cast a light blue light, begin to flash red. The hero then looked at the armor, which started to disassemble, returning to being the separate microbots that were before.

"No... no, no, no, no...not now...dammit!" The hero complained in a panic, while spinning trying to see what happened. Soon his back was to the boy and his armor had completely retracted.

"Um, M-Mr. Stark?" Peter asked, a little scared. He knew something wasn't right.

The hero sighed, then slowly began to turn towards the boy. But the man in front of him wasn't, couldn't possibly be Tony Stark! The man in front of him was much thinner. Iron Man never relied on his own muscles to act as a hero, that's what the suits were for. But Tony Stark's social media posts in gyms doing exercises were pretty famous, at least, so the boy remembered.

His ribs were practically visible through his shirt, his face was more gaunt, his skin paler, hair messy, hands bony; and in his chest, a technological cylinder emitting a pulsating blue light could be seen, as if it were stuck in its ribcage. The man was a cheap knock-off of Tony Stark, and yet, he forced a smile and opened his hand, waving his bony fingers as if he surprised someone at a birthday party. Then he fell backwards onto his rear, an air of exhaustion about him.

Peter's eyes widened, "W-What happened!? Are you alright? What happened to Iron Man!?" He nearly rushed forward, but the irritated expression on the man's face discouraged the notion.

"Wow, that's rude…" He said, standing up. He puts on the glasses that had fallen to the ground. "Kid, I AM Iron Man!" The man finished, thumbing to himself.

"B-but, why are you so…" Peter tried to find the right word. "...Skinny?"

"Ah…" The hero sighs tiredly. "Everyone needs context, and you probably won't shut up until you get some. But don't even dream of posting it online…" He leaned back against the security fence of the building before lifting his shirt. And what the boy saw shocked him to his very core.

At the center of his chest, a metallic cylinder was fitted in the middle of the ribs, with what appeared to be a kind of power source. But that wasn't the worst part. Several gray lines seemed to emerge from the place and spread across the man's pale, skeletal chest, like the veins of a corpse under his skin. But they followed a pattern almost like lines on a circuit...

"The truth is, I don't have a Quirk. Everything I can do? All because of technology I invented," he began, before pointing to the cylinder. "This here's an Arc Reactor; a multi-isotope radio-decay cell that releases a type of energy from a chemical element that I discovered. I had to install it after an accident years back, but it's part of me now. It keeps me alive and it's what lets me be Iron Man. Or at least, it did..."