IRONHEART (Earth-7)

Biography 

Early Life

At only 8 years old, Riri Williams was diagnosed as a supergenius, with an unmatched fascination for engineering. Despite her stepfather encouraging her to pursue more ambitious paths, Riri still dreamed of being a mechanic like him.

 By 13, she was prematurely enrolled in high school, where her reclusive nature deepened. It was during this time that she met Natalie Washington, a neighbor who delivered newspapers and first discovered Riri experimenting in her garage, using stolen car parts to invent a portable air conditioner. What began as curiosity soon grew into friendship, and eventually Natalie became Riri’s first love. 

Natalie supported Riri as she pursued her MIT scholarship, but tragedy struck when Natalie accompanied Riri’s family to a picnic in Marquette Park. A shooting broke out, and amid the chaos both Natalie and Riri’s stepfather were fatally shot.

As Ironheart

Shaken and grieving, Riri — now 18 — retreated into her garage laboratory, where she began building devices driven by her need to undo the past. She constructed a time distortion machine with a massive, complex core, but her early experiments failed to prevent the deaths she so desperately wanted to stop.

Turning to her engineering roots, she then designed a suit of armor, nicknamed “Hearty”, built from her stepfather’s 1971 Plymouth Cuda 440 Six-Pack. Yet Riri’s obsession with time travel persisted. She finally completed a device that could send her back in time by up to five seconds, but the strain of using it pushed her mind beyond its limits.

The Message

In one last desperate attempt, she connected the core to a separate battery. What she saw in that fleeting instant of temporal clarity left her shaken — visions of destiny and words echoing in her mind: “Warn the Avengers” “Save the fabric of time” “You are Her.” “You are Kang, the Conqueror.”