"Bullshit! That was a steel mech weighing several tons! Tear it apart barehanded? What do you think it was, an Amazon delivery box?! That video definitely used special effects!"
Midtown High School, Queens, New York.
Inside the Senior Class 1 classroom, school bully Flash Thompson slapped his desk so hard that the ballpoint pens on it jumped. He pointed at the wall-mounted television above the blackboard, which was playing the Los Angeles news on a loop, spittle flying everywhere.
"Exactly! Tony Stark saying 'I am Iron Man' was cool as hell! That's the ultimate man's dream! Technology! Firepower! Armor!" His little lackey immediately chimed in, his face flushed with excitement.
"Cool, my ass!"
A boy in the back row stood right on his chair, holding a rolled-up magazine like a microphone. "You idiots have all been brainwashed by big business! Didn't you watch those uncut videos people secretly recorded online?"
"That Asian guy in the black trench coat used one hand! You hear me? One hand! He swung that hunk of metal three times Iron Man's size straight into the fountain!" The boy grew more excited as he spoke, waving his arms around.
"That was pure physical strength! A god walking among us, get it? Ripping a Gundam apart barehanded-that's a real man!"
"Bullshit! He had to be some kind of enhanced human secretly developed by Stark Industries!"
"You're the one talking bullshit! That was Chinese kung fu! Qigong! Get it?"
The entire Senior Class 1 classroom erupted.
The armored battle in Los Angeles that had shocked the world, along with Tony Stark's outrageously arrogant declaration, had been like a nuclear bomb dropped into these hormone-fueled teenagers' brains.
The boys quickly split into two camps.
One consisted of staunch "Iron Man tech fans," who firmly believed technology changed the world