system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Marvel Cinematic Universe] What happened between Iron Man 3 and Avengers: Age of Ultron?

After defeating Killian, Tony Stark detonates all his Iron Man suits in a romantic gesture for Pepper, then has the Arc Reactor removed from his chest, presumably to replace it with a lower power magnet or fully remove the shrapnel in his chest. The last scene does show him recovering the first robot arm and vowing to  continue to be Iron Man, but the events leading up to that seem to suggest that name applies directly to Tony, not the suit. 

We flash forward some time to see the Avengers having reunited to hunt down the last remnants of Hydra and recover Loki's scepter, and Tony Stark is right back in the fray in yet another armored suit. Was his promise to Pepper just empty words? (Is that why we don't see her at all through the events of Age of Ultron?) 

I'll grant that Tony does seem very focused on removing himself from the equation, leading him to push the Ultron project harder than he should have, but otherwise very little of the changes he experienced seem to have stuck. What caused him to swing back to his old ways?
gpt
His gesture was to show Pepper that he isn't *just* Iron Man, but he's also Tony Stark. Granted, Tony Stark still needs to act as Iron Man when the world needs him, so he still needs a suit. However, the Iron Legion drones were an attempt to lower the need of the actual Iron Man, one part Pepper, one part Tony being lackadaisical.