#like centralizing project data

[cloud9technologies2]

Benefits of Implementing ERP Software for Engineering Firms

The engineering industry is one of the biggest industries in the world, and it plays an important role in growing the economy as well. The engineering sector is growing day by day and is highly competitive. Hence, efficiency, accuracy, and streamlined operations are crucial for success in this sector. Businesses face several challenges in this sector, like the complexities of a project, resource management, and deadline restrictions. ERP software for engineering firms is the best way to overcome all of these challenges as it integrates and automates business processes.

Here is the list of top benefits of utilizing ERP systems for the engineering industry:

1. Project Management:

The projects in engineering sectors have a detailed documentation process, different teams, and complicated workflows. ERP system for engineering firms help in various ways, like centralizing project data, enabling limitless collaboration, and getting real-time updates. Because of this software, every team member has all the updates, which in turn reduces miscommunication and delays in the project.

2. Resource Management:

For all engineering projects, it is essential to allocate all resources carefully, like equipment, materials, and labor. With the utilization of ERP software, the monitoring of resources can be performed easily. It helps in checking resource availability, optimizing usage, and forecasting requirements. This ultimately results in improving cost efficiency.

3. Quality Management:

Ensures engineering projects meet industry standards and regulations.

Quality Control: Offers tools for monitoring and managing the quality of materials, processes, and completed projects.

4. Data Management:

Using ERP software, engineering firms can make sure that they can get a unified database to eliminate data silos and ensure consistency through all departments. A centralized data management system is beneficial for decision-making as well it provides critical information when required.

5. Time and Budget Management:

When the whole system gets automated with ERP software, it reduces time and cost on repetitive tasks like data entry, procurement, and inventory management. The utilization of ERP systems in engineering firms helps in reducing manual errors and improving productivity. Hence, the firms can focus on other important things like innovation and project execution.

6. Client Relationship Management:

Most ERP systems include customer relationship management tools that are very helpful in managing client interactions. This tool allows the firm to track communication history, project milestones, and client preferences. Because of this feature, firms can improve customer satisfaction and build long-term relationships.

7. Scalability and Flexibility

ERP solutions may scale with the company as it grows, allowing for more projects, clients, and resources. Customization: ERP solutions can typically be tailored to an engineering firm’s specific demands and operations.

8. Financial Management

Accounting combines financial accounting with project management to provide a complete picture of the company’s financial health. Reporting: Creates detailed financial reports, such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

How PMTRACK ERP Helps:

Managing development processes, monitoring complex projects, and ensuring seamless collaboration across divisions are becoming increasingly important for company success. Engineering organizations in Pune, India, and around the world have distinct issues in successfully managing their operations.

Implementing a bespoke Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution provides transformative benefits by streamlining processes, improving project management, and ultimately generating profitability.

For businesses considering ERP adoption, selecting the correct ERP software vendor is critical. PMTRACK ERP, a reputable ERP solution provider in Pune, India, specializes in engineering ERP systems tailored to the demands of engineering and manufacturing companies.

ERP software is used to connect project management with financial accounting, inventory control, and procurement procedures. This integration gives project managers real-time information about project costs, resource availability, and schedules, resulting in better-informed decisions and more effective project execution.

Engineering firms that use an ERP system can improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, improve project delivery, and ultimately boost client satisfaction and profitability.

Summary:

ERP software provides several advantages to engineering firms in Pune, India, ranging from better project management and financial control to higher client satisfaction and scalability. Engineering organizations can employ a comprehensive ERP solution to improve operations, decrease inefficiencies, and drive long-term growth.

PMTRACK ERP, one of the leading ERP solution providers in Pune, India, provides comprehensive, industry-specific ERP solutions that are suitable for engineering organizations’ unique requirements. Firms that collaborate with an experienced engineering ERP software company in India receive a trusted partner in negotiating the complexity of their business, setting them up for success in an increasingly competitive landscape.

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[ayeforscotland]

What is Dataflow?

This post is inspired by another post about the Crowd Strike IT disaster and a bunch of people being interested in what I mean by Dataflow. Dataflow is my absolute jam and I'm happy to answer as many questions as you like on it. I even put referential pictures in like I'm writing an article, what fun!

I'll probably split this into multiple parts because it'll be a huge post otherwise but here we go!

A Brief History

Our world is dependent on the flow of data. It exists in almost every aspect of our lives and has done so arguably for hundreds if not thousands of years.

At the end of the day, the flow of data is the flow of knowledge and information. Normally most of us refer to data in the context of computing technology (our phones, PCs, tablets etc) but, if we want to get historical about it, the invention of writing and the invention of the Printing Press were great leaps forward in how we increased the flow of information.

Modern Day IT exists for one reason - To support the flow of data.

Whether it's buying something at a shop, sitting staring at an excel sheet at work, or watching Netflix - All of the technology you interact with is to support the flow of data.

Understanding and managing the flow of data is as important to getting us to where we are right now as when we first learned to control and manage water to provide irrigation for early farming and settlement.

Engineering Rigor

When the majority of us turn on the tap to have a drink or take a shower, we expect water to come out. We trust that the water is clean, and we trust that our homes can receive a steady supply of water.

Most of us trust our central heating (insert boiler joke here) and the plugs/sockets in our homes to provide gas and electricity. The reason we trust all of these flows is because there's been rigorous engineering standards built up over decades and centuries.

For example, Scottish Water will understand every component part that makes up their water pipelines. Those pipes, valves, fitting etc will comply with a national, or in some cases international, standard. These companies have diagrams that clearly map all of this out, mostly because they have to legally but also because it also vital for disaster recovery and other compliance issues.

Modern IT

And this is where modern day IT has problems. I'm not saying that modern day tech is a pile of shit. We all have great phones, our PCs can play good games, but it's one thing to craft well-designed products and another thing entirely to think about they all work together.

Because that is what's happened over the past few decades of IT. Organisations have piled on the latest plug-and-play technology (Software or Hardware) and they've built up complex legacy systems that no one really knows how they all work together. They've lost track of how data flows across their organisation which makes the work of cybersecurity, disaster recovery, compliance and general business transformation teams a nightmare.

Some of these systems are entirely dependent on other systems to operate. But that dependency isn't documented. The vast majority of digital transformation projects fail because they get halfway through and realise they hadn't factored in a system that they thought was nothing but was vital to the organisation running.

And this isn't just for-profit organisations, this is the health services, this is national infrastructure, it's everyone.

There's not yet a single standard that says "This is how organisations should control, manage and govern their flows of data."

Why is that relevant to the companies that were affected by Crowd Strike? Would it have stopped it?

Maybe, maybe not. But considering the global impact, it doesn't look like many organisations were prepared for the possibility of a huge chunk of their IT infrastructure going down.

Understanding dataflows help with the preparation for events like this, so organisations can move to mitigate them, and also the recovery side when they do happen. Organisations need to understand which systems are a priority to get back operational and which can be left.

The problem I'm seeing from a lot of organisations at the moment is that they don't know which systems to recover first, and are losing money and reputation while they fight to get things back online. A lot of them are just winging it.

Conclusion of Part 1

Next time I can totally go into diagramming if any of you are interested in that.

How can any organisation actually map their dataflow and what things need to be considered to do so. It'll come across like common sense, but that's why an actual standard is so desperately needed!

[woradat]

Throne and fall #3

back <- PT3 (here) -> next

PAIRING – megatron x reader (slightly senator shockwave, proteus x reader)

NOTE – finally done, I did it a little in a hurry..

The room smelled of ozone and ancient data—shelves lined with forgotten legislation, sealed transcripts, and fragments of failed reforms that never made it past committee vote

You sat alone at the central desk, reviewing a projected scroll of proposed amendments, each more watered-down than the last. The idea of allowing the Decepticons—a radicalized workers' movement, barely tolerated—to exist within the framework of political legitimacy had been laughable weeks ago

But now… they were listening because you had made them

The door behind you slid open. You didn’t need to look up to know who had entered “You're early��

“You’re alone” Megatron’s voice echoed off the smooth metal walls—slightly amused, slightly wary

You gestured toward the empty chair across the desk. Not an invitation, exactly—just acknowledgment

“They don’t want their names associated with this proposal. Not yet”

“I’m the only one foolish enough to sign it in full view”

He didn’t sit immediately. Just stood, scanning the chamber—his optics falling on the banners of forgotten political factions long erased from Cybertronian history

“You expect this to pass?”

You looked at him finally—really looked

He was still rough around the edges. Still too loud, too unpolished for these halls. But there was clarity in his eyes—dangerous clarity

“No" You folded your hands calmly

“But I expect the Senate to fear opposing it openly. That’s enough to start”

Megatron said nothing. But the tension in his shoulders loosened—just slightly. You tapped your fingers against the data-slate and slid it toward him

“This would grant Decepticons a trial status as a legal political entity—non-voting, monitored, subject to restrictions”

“So... a leash?”

You smiled faintly “A stage. With limits”

“But better a stage than a dungeon”

He eyed the proposal like it was a grenade with a broken pin “And what does this gain you, Senator?”

“Exactly what I said” you replied, tone cool “I don’t lie, Megatron. I just choose which truths I say aloud”

For a moment, silence bloomed—thick and crackling. Then he stepped closer, leaned on the desk just enough to make your sensors flare

“What happens when they realize you gave us a place at the table?”

Your smile returned—wider this time, sharp like a blade behind silk “They’ll call it naive. Dangerous. Treasonous”

You stood. Slowly. Carefully

“But when it works... they’ll call it leadership”

—

Senator Proteus summoned a closed committee

His tone was gracious, warm—even fatherly. He praised the “courageous compromise” you had led. And then, with a smile that should have warned you more than it did, he said:

“To ensure transparency, we will require a registry of known Decepticon supporters and affiliates. Nothing binding, of course—just for documentation. Safety protocol”

The others nodded

And you—caught between pride and unease—said nothing

Megatron never attended that meeting

But when you met his gaze the next time, you wondered if he’d already guessed what had been asked... and what you hadn’t stopped

—

The air in the atrium held a false calm—like the moment before a glass tips off the edge of a table. Light filtered in from the energy lattice overhead, diffused through intricately carved metalwork, casting fractured shadows across the floor like the remnants of an ancient code no one dared to read aloud

You were already walking toward the exit when a voice—measured, melodious, and unmistakably sharpened at the edges—called out behind you

“Senator”

Your steps slowed, spine straightening by instinct

You didn’t need to turn. You already knew the tone: velvet pulled taut over a blade. Still, you turned—slowly, deliberately—and met the gaze of Senator Proteus

There was always something about him that reminded you of a fire held in a glass chamber: elegant, contained, but undeniably dangerous. His armor gleamed as if the chaos outside could never quite touch him. His poise was sculpted—every movement measured like punctuation in a speech written long before you arrived

“A moment of your time, if it’s not too dear?”

You smiled—thin, polite, carefully empty

“You’ve never asked for time you couldn’t take, Proteus”

He chuckled softly, inclining his head in acknowledgment. The sound was warm, almost fond. A lie told gently

The two of you walked in step to a side alcove—part lounge, part trap. The seating was circular and low, upholstered in rich metals and soft synthetic grain, a place designed to cradle secrets in its architecture

Proteus took his seat like a king who already owned your next three moves

You did not sit. Not yet

“Your latest proposal has made quite the impression,” he said, resting one arm across the back of the seat, eyes tracking you like a cat observing something just shy of prey

You raised an optic ridge

“I thought impressions were your area of expertise”

He smiled again—closer to a knife unsheathing

“Perhaps. But I know how to recognize when someone else sharpens the room”

He gestured faintly

“You’re smarter than they give you credit for. Much smarter”

You tilted your head, finally settling into the curve of the seat opposite him

“Is that admiration or a warning?”

“Must it be one or the other?”

You studied him—his posture, the glint of his optics, the curl of calculated amusement at the corner of his mouth. You had danced with predators before. But Proteus... he was a ballroom unto himself. There were no rules here, only steps you hadn’t discovered yet

“What is it you want to ask me, Proteus?” you said, folding your hands lightly in your lap

“Something specific, I assume—unless you’ve come to discuss lighting arrangements” His smile thinned

“I want to know” he said slowly

“what it is that you see in him”

Silence folded itself between you like velvet

You didn’t pretend not to understand

Megatron

He didn’t say the name like a man spitting poison. He said it like a man observing a flame that had leapt the lantern

You allowed your gaze to drift to the center of the table, where a faint display flickered beneath the glass—motionless now, but earlier it had shown the vote count on the Decepticon Trial Party Proposal

“I see inevitability” you said at last

“You see volatility. Perhaps we’re both right”

He leaned in. Just slightly. Enough that the space between you shifted, became charged

“You’ve always had a taste for dangerous ideas”

You smiled—not wide, not amused, but with a slow, delicate curve that suggested: You have no idea

“And you’ve always had a taste for dangerous minds. Are we trading compliments, or threats?”

Proteus exhaled, soft and sharp

“I find it fascinating”

“You, of all senators—eloquent, controlled, immune to populism—and yet here you are, extending legitimacy to a symbol who’d burn this whole chamber down given the chance”

You met his gaze unflinching, but the edges of your voice cooled

“Because unlike you, I don’t underestimate what the mob will do when they realize they can move without us” He studied you then—not with suspicion, but with something crueler: appreciation

“You’re betting on the storm”

“No” you replied, softly now

“I’m betting I can ride it longer than the rest of you” The silence that followed was not empty. It pulsed—full of what hadn’t been said

Then he stood, his motion fluid, effortless. A politician's departure

“Just remember, senator—storms don’t make bargains” He turned half away, then paused

“And when you lie beside fire...”

“Don’t be surprised if it learns your shape”

You sat still long after he left, gaze fixed on the trail he didn’t leave behind and for the first time that week, the chill in the atrium settled on your shoulders like a prelude

A silent knowing:

You weren’t the only one who had chosen Megatron as a move on the board and soon... someone else might decide to remove the piece altogether

The city was too quiet for a place built on unrest

From the high windows of your office, Iacon spread out like a great machine laid bare—its veins of traffic slowing, its towers dimming one by one, like eyelids heavy with secrets

At this hour, the light was copper-gold, but cold. Not warmth, only illusion.

You sat within it, unmoving, like a statue mistaken for a sentry

Your optics scanned lines of code, intercepted reports, shifting vote counts—none of which soothed the slow coil of unease in your chest. Proteus’s words still echoed somewhere just behind your thoughts:

“Don’t be surprised if it learns your shape”

And he meant it, not as a threat

But as a guarantee

You had gambled before—on motions, on policy, on ideology but never like this. This was no longer a vote. This was the sound of your own footsteps approaching a line no one else could see—yet. Your servo rested on the edge of your desk like you were bracing for a crash

But the crash didn’t come �� Instead, a tone low, singular, no urgency, no permission requested

You looked up just as the door opened—and Senator Shockwave stepped inside. No theatrics. No entourage. Just him, like a whisper of inevitability

He crossed the threshold like silence personified—his armor matte, his presence immense in its restraint. The only sound was the soft pulse of the lighting grids adjusting to his frame, as if the room had to relearn its geometry to accommodate him

He didn’t wait for an invitation

He never had

“You met with Proteus”

The sentence fell like iron through silk—solid, final, unembellished. You looked at him from your seat, one optic slowly narrowing

“Proteus speaks with many” You let the answer slide out, half-truth and whole dodge, cloaked in politeness

He didn’t even blink “Not like that”

There was no weight in his voice. And yet, every syllable pressed down like gravity, subtle and inescapable. You stood slowly, turning your body just enough to face him fully, like a player revealing their hand while still holding three cards behind their back

“You're not here to question my alliances” you said, smooth as polished glass

“So why are you here?”

Shockwave took a measured step forward.

No malice. No warmth. Just purpose “Because I know what you're doing”

The quiet that followed was a cold thing—sharp at the edges, humming beneath your plating. He continued “You think if you maneuver well enough, long enough, you’ll escape the collapse you helped shape”

You felt your mouth tighten—barely

But he saw it. Of course he did

“You think that if you keep him alive long enough, he might become something you can control”

He meant Megatron

You didn’t deny it. You just met his gaze, your own reflection caught in the smooth dark of his optic

“I’m doing what I must to preserve a world that can still be saved” He tilted his head, just slightly. Enough to resemble a scientist examining a strain he’d failed to predict

“No. You’re doing what you must to ensure you survive it”

You felt it then

The rare, bone-deep ache of being seen too clearly. You hated it. The way he did it, quietly, without accusation, without anger.. just… truth

Like a scalpel

He stepped closer again, and the room felt smaller—denser with a silence that no walls could hold back “You’re clever”

“But you’re not invisible”

You took a breath—not because you needed it, but because your systems felt tight, your frame too still

“So you came to chastise me?”

His optic dimmed faintly, as if exhaling through light “No. I came to remind you that he will trust no one else when it starts to fall apart”

You looked away, toward the window again

The city below gleamed like a gemstone cracked along fault lines. You wondered—if you told Megatron, truly told him—whether he’d listen. Whether he’d believe it came from care, not calculus

And whether it mattered either way, behind you, Shockwave’s voice returned. Low. Even

“I am not here to save him”

“Or you”

You turned to face him again. Not fully—just enough for him to see the shadows along your jawline, the tension behind your optics

“Then why?”

He was quiet for a long breath “Because some truths deserve to be spoken... before they’re lost in the rubble”

And with that, he turned. The door opened without a word and closed behind him with a whisper that sounded too much like finality

You stood in the quiet

Still

And for the first time in a long time—

you wished he had stayed because he was the only one who ever told you the truth... without trying to hurt you with it

—

The chamber was lit like a stage

Soft sconces mounted on curved silver columns cast long golden shadows along the high walls, leaving the center of the room aglow in a pool of cultivated warmth. This wasn’t light for illumination—it was light for presentation. The kind that made polished armor gleam and imperfections soften

Which, of course, made Megatron look completely out of place

He sat stiffly in the ornate chair you’d prepared for him—its frame elegant, its cushions designed for senators who had never lifted more than legislation in their lives. His heavy miner’s frame draped awkwardly over it, like a weapon laid across a velvet chaise

You stood in front of him, datapad in hand, arms crossed loosely as you surveyed your work in progress

“You look like you’ve been arrested by furniture”

He gave you a look—equal parts irritation and unspoken challenge.

“You said this was a strategy meeting”

“It is”

You stepped closer, tilting your helm just slightly to catch the light the way high-caste diplomats were trained to

Your voice dropped to a thoughtful murmur.

“You want a place at their table. This—” You gestured around him, to the room, the elegance, the symbols of elite civility “—is what the table looks like. And right now, you’re chewing the silverware”

He scoffed—quietly. But he didn’t move. Didn’t argue

Progress

You took the datapad and handed it to him, letting your fingers linger on the edge for a breath longer than necessary

“Read the first line”

He read aloud, flatly “It is an honor to address the chamber on behalf of the disenfranchised–”

Then paused

Looked up at you like he’d swallowed something sour “I’d rather scream at them”

You grinned, stepping around him like a curious lecturer circling a student caught between instinct and intellect

“That’s exactly why we practice"

You tapped the top of the chair where his shoulders slouched ever so slightly “Back straight. You’re a senator-to-be, not a doorframe with resentment issues”

He stiffened

“I carry weight. I’m not built for theatrics"

“Every word spoken in the chamber is a performance” You walked to your own chair, finally lowering yourself into it, letting the folds of your robe settle just so

“You’ve performed rage. Now try poise”

He looked at you then—properly

Not with disdain, not with challenge but with.. a question

You could feel the moment he tried to understand you—not your instructions, but you, as if searching for a crack in your logic that would justify resisting you completely

He didn’t find one

Not yet

“They think I’m a weapon” he said at last, his tone lower now almost thoughtful

“You’re giving me the illusion of polish. What happens when they realize it’s just paint over fire?”

You held his gaze “Then make them love the heat before they see the flame”

For a moment, something shifted

The air between you thinned

Not romantically, not quite—but electrically, like a static charge waiting to snap between two polarities that didn’t know how to stop orbiting each other. You reached forward slowly, brushing the edge of his chestplate—not intimately, just correcting posture

“When you speak, do not lean in"

He blinked “Why?”

“Because they’ll think you’re about to punch them”

A pause. Then—

“Would that be so bad?”

You raised an optic ridge

“Only if you want to get tased with a behavior-correction protocol before your second sentence” Megatron looked away then, but you caught the shadow of something unspoken tugging at his mouth. Not a smile. Not yet

But something... yielding

You leaned back, voice lighter

“You can scream on the senate floor after you survive your first meeting without threatening someone’s energon ration" and then, in the quiet that followed, came the surprise

“You enjoy this” he said

You didn’t deny it because yes, you did.

Not the power. Not the smug satisfaction but the rare, delicious act of shaping something raw and formidable into something that could endure in a world built to exclude him

You saw it

Even if he didn’t, yet

You steepled your digit, leaned back into your chair with all the ease of a mentor preparing to throw their least favorite student to the wolves.

“Alright, let’s play a game”

Megatron narrowed his optics

“If this is one of those simulations where I pretend to enjoy glad-handing senators, I’m walking out”

You smirked

“Close. You pretend to tolerate their questions. Which is nearly the same thing”

You tapped the datapad, calling up a list of likely inquiries from the Senate floor.

Your voice turned crisp—an imitation of one of the old guard. Uptight, suspicious, and masterfully condescending

“Question One”

“Megatron of Tarn, do you or do you not condone the recent acts of sabotage committed by workers identifying as Decepticon sympathizers?”

Megatron’s optics narrowed instantly

His reply was immediate:

“If your system leaves people desperate enough to destroy it, perhaps you should ask what they’re sabotaging for—not who led them there”

You blinked

You leaned back with a pained smile “That was direct, sharp, condemning. Also: a diplomatic warcrime”

He scowled “I told the truth”

“Yes, and in politics, that’s worse than lying”

He looked deeply unamused

You smiled sweetly “Try again, but this time: use regret. Empathy. And the suggestion that you’re not already planning to level the building"

He grumbled lowly, then rephrased, stiffly: “We do not condone violence—but the actions of desperate citizens must be understood in context”

You applauded—once, slow and mocking “There it is! The first sentence you’ve ever spoken that wouldn’t get you tased on live broadcast”

“I hated every word”

“Good. That means it was passable” You leaned forward again, resting your elbows on the table

“question two”

“If the Decepticons truly support equality, why are they organized around a single leader—you?” Megatron’s expression shifted. Something flickered behind his optics

His voice, lower now:

“Because a voice that cuts through silence must come from somewhere”

You paused

The room... stilled

That answer hadn’t been rehearsed. It hadn’t even been strategic.

It was just honest and something in you—cold, clever you—felt it land harder than it should have but you forced a smile, lighter this time

“…Too poetic. They’ll call it cultish"

“It’s the truth"

“So was the myth of the Primes. You want to fight that? Use their tools. Not your fire”

He didn’t reply, not immediately

“Last one. And be careful—this one’s a trap”

You lifted your voice into a pious whine "Given your background in manual labor and non-academic work, what qualifies you to lead political discourse at a legislative level?"

Megatron’s voice came low and steady:

“The fact that I’ve lived every policy failure this government ever passed—on my back, in my wages, in my dead”

You looked at him, lips parted slightly

You didn’t respond right away

Because that... was good. Too good

You felt it, deep in your chassis—the weight of the truth said without poetry, without pretense and it silenced you for a breath longer than expected. Then you cleared your throat, quietly

“…We'll soften the last line. But that one stays”

He tilted his head slightly “You approve”

You met his optics

“It was the first thing you’ve said tonight that made me want to listen, not just correct you”

A beat of silence He didn’t smile. But the shift in his armor said enough—something less combative. A glimmer of trust, however begrudging

“Are we done?”

“Almost”

You stood, walking behind him with slow, deliberate steps. The air in the chamber had grown heavier—not from heat, but from closeness. The kind of stillness that didn’t suffocate, just invited you to forget breathing for a while.

You circled behind him slowly, datapad forgotten, voice now low and conversational.

“Posture, Megatron"

He stiffened slightly—half annoyance, half anticipation

“Again?”

“Always”

You smiled as you stopped behind him “Your presence is already loud. Your movements need not be”

You reached forward with both hands, resting them gently at the tops of his shoulders. The texture of his plating was rough from years of labor—unpolished, practical. Under your fingers, you could feel the slight tension where his armor fought against relaxation

“Relax this”

You pressed lightly into the junction between his neck and shoulder

He didn’t move

“That is relaxed”

You sighed, stepping closer, voice slipping into something near a whisper

“You sit like someone expecting to be shot”

“I usually am”

You bit back a smile

He really was terrible at this

Gently, you dragged your hand down his arm, until you reached his elbow. With one firm nudge, you drew his arm away from his side and rested it more loosely against the chair’s armrest

“If your arms are locked, you look combative. If your back is arched, you look wounded. If your optic line is too sharp—” You leaned in then, over his shoulder, speaking near the side of his helm

“—you look like you’re hunting prey”

He turned his head just slightly. You were very close now. Not quite touching. But enough that your reflection curved in the matte gleam of his armor

“Maybe I am”

You arched a brow

“Then at least learn how to smile while you do it”

He scoffed—deep, quiet. But he didn’t pull away

You moved around to face him again. His body had shifted—still stiff, but more aligned. Like a statue that had just remembered it was once alive

“Better” you said, gently placing two fingers under his chin to tilt it just a fraction “Keep your helm level. It tells them you have nothing to hide”

He looked at you

Not hostile. Not grateful — just.. seeing

And for a beat, you weren’t the teacher, and he wasn’t the student. You were two players who’d stopped pretending this was just a game

He muttered “All this, just to sit in a room full of people who want me dead”

You smiled, stepping back at last

“That’s politics, now sit up straight, Megatron of Tarn”

—

You had stopped correcting his posture ten minutes ago but he hadn’t noticed or rather—he hadn’t shifted back to the old, guarded position

He still sat upright, his frame a little less rigid, his movements less sharp at the joints. As though something in this room—your voice, your touch, the velvet quiet—had dulled the edges he’d spent years grinding against steel

You pretended not to notice. You returned to your seat, legs crossed, head tilted just so as you flipped casually through the datapad again

“Not bad” you said, eyes still on the screen

“If I squint, you almost look tolerable”

He let out a breath through his vents—less a laugh than a sound of disbelief at your persistence

“You enjoy this far too much”

“Teaching a wild to sit up and behave? Of course”

He didn’t rise to the bait, didn’t throw words like daggers. He just looked at you and this time, he looked for longer than was polite

Not out of suspicion

Not to gauge your usefulness

But because... something about this—this ridiculous charade of civility, this hour of pretend peace—had become soothing in a way that frightened him more than any weapon. He finally spoke, voice quieter now, almost thoughtful

“They’ll never accept me”

You glanced up, one brow raised

“That’s not the point”

“Then what is?”

You set the datapad down, leaned forward just a little, resting your elbow on the armrest “The point” you said, softly now

“is to make them believe it’s their idea”

He was silent. But you saw the flicker behind his optics—the brief shine of something like understanding. Or maybe admiration. He hated politics but he didn’t hate how you played it

Your voice gentled further, as if the quiet invited honesty “And when they try to write you off, you give them a speech they can’t stop quoting”

He shook his head once, the edge of a smile tugging where it didn’t belong

“You really think I can do that?”

You didn’t blink

Didn’t laugh this time

“I wouldn’t be wasting my time if I didn’t”

He looked down, and for the first time, his shoulders fell—not in defeat, but in something else

A loosening. A long-held tension finally giving up its hold. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was... settled as if—for this hour at least—he could stop bracing for betrayal

Then he looked at you again, optics softer, more searching

“You always believe in the impossible?”

“Only when it walks in wearing dented armor and a chip on its shoulder"

He huffed a breath—not quite a laugh. But close and just like that, something in him tipped

It wasn’t dramatic

Not loud but for the first time, he didn’t feel the need to run from comfort or from you

[simaddix]

Opening TS3 Medieval Market

Hello, my lovelies! Today I would like to talk about an opportunity for our beloved medieval (and historic) TS3 community!

Interested? Well, I guess let’s get into it and see how far it goes.

Why Discord, rather than a Tumblr Community or a personal page?

That’s a great question – and one that might be better explored as time goes on. However, here are a few perks that I’ve noticed.

1: A discord server as a download market presents an ideal solution by combining accessibility, organization, and engagement.

2: Organization – less scattered forums/websites. Discord allows structured categories and channels to keep content well-organized. We have the option to create additional channels or categories to keep content separated – so there’s less confusion when people stop using a tag, or add a new one that other’s aren’t tracking. There are also transferable roles assigned by moderators, so if someone wants to leave – there is no data lost, and the server stays active as usual.

3: Direct downloads – requiring no additional host/server. If you’re a part of the creator discord pages, then you’ll notice there is a hoard of available downloads that bypass the need to go to an alternate download site. Creators can upload their content directly into the appropriate category.

4: Discord servers have little to no spam bots (that I’ve noticed, anyway), and if there are issues, it’s relatively easy to remove those pests and keep the community protected.

5: By centralizing downloads in a dedicated server, creators can upload their content, receive immediate feedback, and build faster relationships with their community, and followers can immediately engage, comment, or download. Discord mimics Tumblr in that it allows for real-time interactions, sneak peeks, polls, events and more.

Here's what I've established so far inside the server:

A welcome channel established for people to drop into the server, and members to say hello!

More channels to host discussions, show off real life/other games/hobbies/etc. And of course, everything TS3 - because we like seeing people play!

All the "Market" tabs you could want! (And if it's not there, we'll add it to the list - free of charge lol)

The "Cargo" section mimics the creator discords a bit in that it allows you to ask WCIFs, make CC requests, trade and barter another member/creator for CC (I.E - swap CAS for BUILD/BUY items, etc), start collab projects, and more.

I highly recommend also keeping up to date with the other creator discords, there's already so much activity there!

_____________________________________________________________

Is the market meant to replace Tumblr pages, other creator discords, or personal pages?

Absolutely not! As we all know, there are many Tumblr pages/websites/servers dedicated to the TS3 community at large. Ts3 has thrived for so long partly because it has such a dedicated modding community, and hosts player-made content. However, distributing and protecting all of the content effectively while also fostering a sense of community is challenging. There has been a massive amount of effort put into the community through wonderful pages such as @katsujiiccfinds and @pis3update, (as well as all the other CC pages out there), I am personally a member of two creator discords that have been essential to me as I’ve learned to create, and now tumblr is exploring the new community options. However, the fallback of this is that hosts get burnt out, stop creating themselves, or abandon pages/websites all the time. There are many of these “ghosts” haunting Tumblr as we speak – though we all love a good comeback story, so to those who have returned, or will return, we all welcome you back with wide open arms! Right? Right! Huzzah! The point is, this discord is not meant to replace any of these options, but it might help us find a centralized location.

Modern/electrical CC will be booed – but possibly tolerated lol

This Discord is being opened as of right now – so don’t be surprised if you pop in and there’s no CC yet. These things take time – Rome wasn’t built in a day.

You will need a Discord account to follow the invite!

Paid only content will not be allowed on this discord. If you would like to upload paid content - you can always start free servers on Discord! When your content is free - absolutely feel free to add it to the market!

See you there! (Please let me know if there are any link issues!)

Personal Letter of Invitation: https://discord.gg/e6skNu9t

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Pandora Dewan

Levels of the virus that causes COVID-19 remain high across the U.S. despite recent decreases in positive case reports across the country. However, viral activity varies significantly across different states, new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows.

As of September 21, the overall viral activity level in wastewater across the country has been demoted from "very high" to just "high," although "very high" levels are still being detected in 13 states. These are particularly concentrated in the Midwest. Twenty-one states now exhibit "high" levels of wastewater activity, and nine are classed as "moderate."

Meanwhile, "low" levels have been detected in six states, with "minimal" levels, the lowest classification, seen in New York.

After a surge in COVID-19 cases this summer, infection rates seem to be on the decline. Positive tests now account for 11.6 percent of all COVID tests (excluding at-home testing) in the U.S., down 1.8 percent from the previous week. Coronavirus levels do remain high in certain states, especially those in the Central U.S.

The map below shows which states have seen the highest detections in wastewater.

(Follow link for interactive map)

Viral levels in wastewater are a helpful indicator of disease prevalence within a population.

Recent spikes in COVID-19 cases have been largely driven by a new class of subvariants nicknamed FLiRT after the position of the mutations on the virus' spike proteins, the projections that allow them to enter our cells.

These proteins are also used as targets by immune systems and vaccinations, so changes in their structure can allow the virus to bypass the body's defenses more easily. However, existing vaccines are likely to provide at least some form of protection against more severe symptoms and long COVID.

As of September 28, the now dominant subvariant, KP.3.1.1, accounted for more than 59 percent of all U.S. COVID-19 cases over the previous two weeks, according to the CDC, with the FLiRT variants accounting for more than 80 percent of cases in total.

However, while the U.S. has seen a steady rise in infections over the summer, hospitalizations and deaths have remained relatively low. It appears that the new FLiRT variants, while more infectious, do not generally cause such severe symptoms.

The symptoms include the following, according to the CDC:

Fever or chills Cough Shortness of breath Fatigue Muscle or body aches Headache Loss of taste or smell Sore throat Runny nose Nausea or vomiting Diarrhea

More vulnerable individuals may still be at risk of severe illness, so it is important to self-isolate if you receive a positive COVID test.

[bylerlipglances]

FIREBALL

this could be the sound of Will shooting fireballs. The same OST plays 'She'll Kill You'

Will doesn't look too thrilled to use the fireballs but he can rise to the occasion when the time demands it. Till then, he'll stick to his wisdom. (possibly due to its adverse reaction, eg: nuclear bombs are potent but come with terrible side effects, irreversible damages). HE USES THEM WISELY. Foreshadowing his restrain.

*FIRE CAUTION*

Note: These might be little far-fetched. This is my failed attempt to understand why dialogues emphasised on color of fireball? i could be way off. i am following Marvel's interpretation since X-Men and Superman have been mentioned by the party.

GREEN LANTERN AND color of his ring theory

Green lantern powers(embedded in his rings) and parallel with will byers. 'Will' POWER is his actual power. Will is at the centre of his power.

Energy Projection: It can emit powerful blasts of energy, create force fields, and provide energy-based attacks for offense and defense. (electromagnetic field & fireballs?)

Data Analysis and Scanning: it can scan for information, detect energy signatures, and provide tactical analysis.(Nina project, IP?)

Teleportation: Some rings have the ability to teleport the wearer across vast distances. (true sight, now memories?)

Environmental Adaptation: It creates a life-support system for the wearer, allowing them to survive in extreme conditions, including the vacuum of space. (upside down?)

Time Travel the ring has been used to manipulate time. Wormholes and Spatial Warps: The power ring grants its wearer access to wormholes in space, enabling the ring wielder to rapidly cut time and distance needed for transport. The Guardians established at least one known wormhole to Oa, which once required the use of a power ring to enter. (Gates)

Weaknesses

Willpower Dependence: The ring’s strength is directly tied to the user’s willpower and emotional focus. If the user doubts themselves or loses concentration, the ring's effectiveness diminishes.

Limited Charge: The ring has a finite charge and must be recharged regularly using a power battery, which connects to the Central Power Battery on Oa. If it runs out of energy, the user becomes powerless. (Dustin's remark "Dead battery". eleven being drained)

speaking of charger, Mike is shown to be directly or indirectly associated with POWER SWITCH & SOCKETS ( source of energy? a charger ? a battery? for will?)

Vulnerability to Fear (Parallax Influence) : Lanterns' weakness to the 'COLOR YELLOW' came from the Fear entity trapped within the Green Lantern Corps' central power battery.

Mental or Emotional Instability: Strong negative emotions (fear, doubt, or anger) can interfere with a Green Lantern's ability to wield their ring effectively.

Mental Instability Protocol: Drug use, neural interference, vertigo or other forms of mental incapacitation can render the wearer unable to use their ring, rendered useless.

“I don’t know who’s been raising you, but I’m gonna get you some new crayons because it looks like he’s shooting cabbages.”

Is Will a Most Powerful 'Failed experiment'? like Madelyne Pryor?

Another green x-men, who is, possibly the most powerful, Goblin Queen (Clone of Jean) , X-Men Goblin Queen, Madelyne Pryor, X-Men's Most Dangerous, anti-hero. She unlocked her latent psychic powers. In addition to those, Madelyne also had the ability to perform sorcery, which she used to summon goblins and demons.

Madelyne eventually learns that she's a clone of Jean created by Mister Sinister. Sinister originally discarded her as a failed experiment, until the Phoenix itself gave Madelyne sentience.

Madelyne's powers are incredible hence the suggestion. might i add, a close parallel to will's alleged powers.

i am a more of a 'will byers is superman' kinda guy. but my personal favourite being will byers 'a divine deity/god' @greenfiend 's theory.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

connecting green lantern with Kryptonite: Green latern's ring can project beams of force powered by the will of the user. The ring can be used to 'produce kryptonite' and kryptonite radiation.

in context of SUPERMAN

Superman is a regular Kryptonian man, He gets his powers from our yellow sun, green kryptonite cancels that.

Uranium fluoresces green under U.V. light (Atomic Bomb theory correlation)

Green Kryptonite : It was a radioactive element composed of pieces of the exploded planet Krypton. Surviving natives of Krypton, Superman is weakened by exposure to Green Kryptonite. Prolonged exposure could result in fatal radiation poisoning.

Red kryptonite :Superman has suffered the following effects upon exposure to various pieces of Red Kryptonite: Transformed into a dragon, Rendered temporarily blind to anything colored green, Loss of power, Gained telepathy, Generated an evil doppelganger , Mental transference, Personality alteration

vecna mind lair is red toned

BLUE-K : most interesting one is Blue-K (Upside down is blue toned)

Blue Kryptonite can reverse the effects of Red Kryptonite and can work wonders on afflicted Kryptonians. Perhaps Will created upside down to save himself & hawkins? (Superman is credited for manufacturing Blue-K, to save fellow Kryptonian see the kryptonite handbook) Effects on Bizarro(Man of steel's doppelganger and a supervillain) Blue Kryptonite weakens Bizarro (does Upside Down weakeans Vecna, hence he needs tentacles to recharge?) in a similar way to how Green Kryptonite weakens Superman. It can also sedate Bizarro, allowing him to be apprehended. Blue Kryptonite can also have a calming effect on Bizarro, removing his rage toward Superman. Blue-k was created by reversing the ionic charge of green kryptonite.

[artbyblastweave]

Any ideas to connect SU Diamonds and Worm Entities for a crossover?

For the past three years and change, I've been kicking around the idea of the Gempire as the residual result of an entity that botched its own cycle so badly that the central Zion-style figurehead holding the entire operation together is a hundred-thousand-year-gone memory. The result amounts to an entity with serious brain damage; The gems retain elements of the original programming for the cycle- namely, the ability to create anthromorphized avatars reflective of the local culture, and the drive to reproduce and consume planets to perpetuate themselves- but they've completely lost the plot on other important elements, namely the importance of hybridizing with local host species, their historical record, the full extent of their dimensional manipulation capabilities, best practices for resource extraction, and, most crucially, mutation, change and innovation as a desirable outcome.

Rather than an avatar, White Diamond is an intelligence analogous to a Endbringer or Titan who slid into the vacant role as the next-most-powerful autonomous portion of the network, holding the consolidated, stretched-thin remains of the original Network together by her fingernails while also deleteriously superimposing her own residual instinct from her original role onto the entire network- namely, to pacify, homogenize and sterilize host planets if and when a cycle is beginning to get out of control. This hybridized with residual data from previous host species that caused the gempire to organize in a fascimile of imperial structures encountered back when their cycle was still functional; essentially "Playing House" at the societal level, aping the culture of a host species without really remembering why.

The result of this is a "cycle" that's bad at everything it's supposed to do but effective enough that it limps on regardless- supremely energy inefficient, stripping planets bare rather than experimenting, and utterly developmentally stagnant. In the unlikely event that an entity were to cross paths with the Gempire, they'd have an uncanny-valley reaction to it and likely attempt to euthanize it, but compared to most entities the Gempire is tiny- while Shards canonically deploy in the hundreds of millions, the gems tend to reproduce only a few tens of thousands of themselves each time they claim a planet, and they usually only strip mine the handful of "active" worlds that would feature in a normal cycle rather than obliterating all dimensional iterations of it.

Yellow, Blue and eventually Pink are similar constructs to White, brought online to assist her in the project after the "imperial" territorial holdings grew too vast to micromanage. Unfortunately (for the cycle) another one of the things that got lost in translation were the controls meant to keep individual shards from developing autonomy or attachment-to-hosts. When the Gempire hit Earth, Pink Diamond and a significant contingent of the network, after patterning themselves after humans and spending a significant amount of time on the ground, pulled a fragile-one and went native, leading to a localized civil war that ended under unclear circumstances when the other the diamonds glassed the planet from orbit and pulled back their operations to prevent whatever affected the rebels from spreading.

All of this happened about 8000 years before the events of Worm, in a universe about 43 dimensions down the line from anything seen in the Earth Bet Cluster; due to the Gempire having mutated so much as to no longer be immediately recognizable as fellow Entities, and with so few active gems left on the planet in the aftermath of the rebellion, Zion ignored the crystal gems and folded them away into the inaccessible dimensional space, where the events of the show played out much as they did in SU canon. Ironically, Steven is the first ever example of this cycle successfully empowering a host, in the most roundabout way possible.

In my notes, and in keeping with the religious-theme-naming of the canon entities, I usually refer to this whole situation as Nirvana (what else would you call it when they break the cycle?)

[popatochisssp]

Wait what do you mean carmen and vi can't shortcut this is news to me— :0c

Is it because they haven't known they could do it or it's cause their souls got tampered to hell and back that they cant do it anymore?

The missing piece in this one is actually Gaster!

In (nearly) every other universe, Gaster ceases to exist, scattering everything he ever was or could be like dust in the wind, into the Void.

Which puts the things (and people) he left behind in an odd position of 'not supposed to exist.' But they do, and as load-bearing elements of the world--the CORE, Sans, Papyrus--they must continue to exist, even though the monster that made them is gone, both proactively and retroactively.

The universe abhors a vacuum.

So does the Void.

When Gaster ceased to exist, it left one such vacuum and the Void flowed in to fill in the cracks, like a kintsugi vase.

Most people lost memories, or found them altered to simply warp around the empty space Gaster left behind.

The skeleton brothers…discovered some new abilities.

But in the Fruition 'verses, none of that happened!

So Carmine (Underfell Fruition Sans) and Vi (Swapfell Fruition Sans) can't cut through time and space in the blink of an eye, and Tank (Underfell Fruition Papyrus) and Hunter (Swapfell Fruition Papyrus) can't look sideways at the world around them and perceive its building blocks to no-clip right through them.

Don't worry, they're still pretty, they have plenty of other stuff going for them!

Carmine, due to his…adjustments, generates magic at a ridiculous pace, to the point of being able to fire off bone-bullets and blasters seemingly bottomlessly.

He makes so much, in fact, that his extrasensory perception is through the roof and if he tunes into it just right, he can skim surface thoughts right out of peoples' heads--which you'd think would be why he seems to be so wholly, near-comically lucky, like he's just operating around the thoughts and intentions he's subconsciously gleaning from the people around him.

But no, that supernatural luck seems to be a separate Boon entirely, gut feelings and weird, off vibes that Just seem to come and go, steering him through and around trouble he'd otherwise walk into without that strange auspice. Eh, he doesn't question it much…

Tank is, of course, extremely strong, with more physical power at his disposal than any other monster he's ever heard of--even stronger than Asgore, and he's a Boss Monster.

His grasp on and control of magic is admittedly much weaker than it should be, but as a trade-off he's entirely immune to damage from intent, which is huge. A hate-filled blow that would dust another monster would only glance off of him, doing only as much damage as the physical power of the strike contains.

Not that he FIGHTs much anymore, but Underground he was an absolute powerhouse, reflective of his nickname. He never once lost an Encounter or let himself (or anyone with him) get hurt, moving through battles like he'd fought them a dozen times before, like he just knew exactly what to do and when. Oddly enough, Frisk had the same way about them, when they eventually fell down… Huh.

Vi, after Gaster's focus shifted to the stronger sibling, actually didn't undergo much Adjustment. He wasn't the central project, only a peripheral asset, so he wasn't much invested in. Still, he was practically born with a keen eye for detail, almost hyperattentive to outliers and discrepancies in data presented to him, making him an excellent analyst.

And even without enhancement, his ability to stealth and slip beneath peoples' notice is impressive, only more and more finely honed over the years. He can cross nearly any room without making a sound, utterly silent, and unless you're already looking for him, you'd never notice him in a crowd--whether it was a crowd of monsters or a crowd of humans.

And naturally, he has the patience of a god, a seemingly limitless ability to sit by and accept even the worst of circumstances quietly while he waits (read: arranges the circumstances) for it to change. Doesn't seem like a super-power at first, and technically isn't, but to actually see it in action, how calmly he can just wait…it's impressive.

By comparison, Hunter is a good bit flashier. He has been enhanced--stronger, faster, more durable, heightened senses and reflexes--nothing shocking for a monster, but certainly more than anyone else of his build and breeding would be capable of without significant training.

He even has a built-in poison resistance, shrugging off toxins that would knock out anyone else and walking away from poisons that could fell a Boss Monster with little more than a headache or a queasy feeling to show for it. Needless to say, even hard drugs and alcohol tend to barely make a dent in him.

But he wouldn't be much of a spy-slash-assassin if he couldn't also be stealthy, so he ended up learning how to suppress his LV. It's not something most monsters in a 'fell verse would even think to bother with--letting other people feel the strength of your magic and your willingness to kill is a great deterrent to being messed with, so why hide it? Why seem weaker than you are and let other monsters think they're stronger than you?

Obvious answer: when that's what you want them to think, so they'll let you get close, and so they won't think twice about being alone with you. :)

[calvogostoso]

Since it's getting screenings in other countries too now, I highly, highly recommend you go watch the movie Ainda Estou Aqui aka I'm Still Here if you can. Not because of the Oscars but because of how relevant it still (unfortunately) is today.

The latter half of the 20th century saw a wave of US-backed military coup d'états sinking Latin America in decades of far-right authoritarian dictatorial regimes, who cooperated between themselves and the United States to coordinate the violent repression of "political enemies" that resulted in the torture, disappearance and murder of a still unknown total number of people, among them students, workers, activists, minorities, members of armed resistance groups and even members of the military themselves.

In 2014, Brazil's National Truth Comission officially reported 434 people as dead or missing. Additionally, around 20.000 brazilians are estimated to have been subjected to torture at the hands of the State. In practice, however, the numbers are much higher, and they don't even take the State's project of genocide against indigenous peoples into acount.

Keep in mind that the data I'm showing only corresponds to Brazil, but this was happening all over the continent, in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador. And even before the wave of coups in South America, the US had been doing the same thing in Central America and The Caribbean.

To this day, most of the perpetrators of this violence, despite being well known, never had to pay for their crimes. On the contrary, they're praised for it more often than we'd like, and all meanwhile thousands of families are to this day deprived of even as much as a body to bury.

This was never "a thing of the past", because Latin Americans are still very much suffering from the wounds inflicted on us during that time, we're reminded of them every day and we feel them every day, no matter how many far-right politicians and their minions try to deny it. Our countries haven't been treated as anything other than colonies since 1492.

The fact that these stories aren't too well known outside of our borders, along with the current political climate in the US and the rest of the world, and specially because of the internal efforts to erase them, I think now more than ever it's important to inform yourself, help keep those memories alive and fight alongside us.

[necesito-mas-cafe]

Mission: Make the new agent resign cap 2!

[Field Testing Chamber — 2:21 p.m.]

Robotnik (Experiment Note #10)

Objective: Induce voluntary resignation in Subject Stone without direct violence, so Walters doesn’t reduce my funding.

Method: Lock subject inside electrified cage before lunchtime. No comforts, no positive stimulation. Planned isolation to provoke psychological discomfort.

Preliminary result: Subject exhibits reverse reaction: mild enthusiasm, ironic tone. Further data required.

Robotnik didn’t even turn when the rear gate closed behind Stone with a metallic CLANK! —final, sharp, like a hammer on a coffin.

"Is this... a cell?" Stone asked, eyeing the electrified walls around him.

"Oh! How did that happen?" Robotnik said from the central console, not bothering to hide his smug grin.

"An accident?"

"Totally random. Systems glitch sometimes." Robotnik pressed a button without looking away from his screen. Instantly, a set of colorful lasers began spinning in spirals around Stone, projecting symmetrical figures like a sinister disco choreography.

Stone slowly turned in place. The colors danced on his face like stained glass in a pagan chapel.

He didn’t look alarmed.

In fact… he looked entertained.

"This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in weeks," he said calmly.

"...What?"

"You locked me in your private lab. With lights and everything. Are you trying to impress me?"

"I’m trying to psychologically torture you into quitting!"

"…It’s lovely."

"IT IS NOT!"

Robotnik slammed his console so hard a bolt flew off, clinking against the floor like a metallic giggle. He stormed over to the cage, his coat billowing like a restrained thunderstorm, and pointed at Stone with a trembling finger full of indignation.

"WHO just stands there smiling when they’re trapped in a cage with the electromagnetic field activated!?"

"And who designs cages with this kind of oddly specific ambience?" Stone smiled and leaned forward slightly, not quite touching the bars. His voice lowered — smooth and deep.

"Doctor… do you want me to stay?"

Robotnik choked on his own fury.

"NO! I want you to quit, to scream, to tell Walters I’m a public menace and you’re being forced to work with a lunatic!"

"Mmm… how about I tell him you’re a brilliant, passionate man, and your lab has excellent acoustics?"

Robotnik clenched his jaw and spun on his heel.

"Three more hours in that cage. Then I want you gone!"

"Is that a metaphor…?"

"NO!"

"Perfect."

Experiment Note #10 — Robotnik

Emotional state: Exhausted. Confused. Tired of not being feared.

Resignation induction method: Electrified cage before lunch, ambient isolation, dissonant laser stimulation.

Result: Subject displays relaxed demeanor. Apparent stress level: low. Enthusiasm level: moderately elevated.

Observation: Subject interprets hostile actions as affection. Possible cognitive reconfiguration due to prolonged exposure to lab environment. Emotional cross-conditioning? Affective mirage? Impenetrable stupidity?

Next step: Redesign protocol. Remove any variables that could be interpreted as 'romantic' (?!).

Excerpt from Stone’s personal diary

«A cell designed just for me? A time limit? Lights spinning around me while the Doctor watches from his console? I’m trapped in his attention.»

[mariacallous]

Next year will be Big Tech’s finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to “little tech” against the centralized power of incumbents.

Why the fall from grace? One reason is that the collateral consequences of the current Big Tech business model are too obvious to ignore. The list is old hat by now: centralization, surveillance, information control. It goes on, and it’s not hypothetical. Concentrating such vast power in a few hands does not lead to good things. No, it leads to things like the CrowdStrike outage of mid-2024, when corner-cutting by Microsoft led to critical infrastructure—from hospitals to banks to traffic systems—failing globally for an extended period.

Another reason Big Tech is set to falter in 2025 is that the frothy AI market, on which Big Tech bet big, is beginning to lose its fizz. Major money, like Goldman Sachs and Sequoia Capital, is worried. They went public recently with their concerns about the disconnect between the billions required to create and use large-scale AI, and the weak market fit and tepid returns where the rubber meets the AI business-model road.

It doesn’t help that the public and regulators are waking up to AI’s reliance on, and generation of, sensitive data at a time when the appetite for privacy has never been higher—as evidenced, for one, by Signal’s persistent user growth. AI, on the other hand, generally erodes privacy. We saw this in June when Microsoft announced Recall, a product that would, I kid you not, screenshot everything you do on your device so an AI system could give you “perfect memory” of what you were doing on your computer (Doomscrolling? Porn-watching?). The system required the capture of those sensitive images—which would not exist otherwise—in order to work.

Happily, these factors aren’t just liquefying the ground below Big Tech’s dominance. They’re also powering bold visions for alternatives that stop tinkering at the edges of the monopoly tech paradigm, and work to design and build actually democratic, independent, open, and transparent tech. Imagine!

For example, initiatives in Europe are exploring independent core tech infrastructure, with convenings of open source developers, scholars of governance, and experts on the political economy of the tech industry.

And just as the money people are joining in critique, they’re also exploring investments in new paradigms. A crop of tech investors are developing models of funding for mission alignment, focusing on tech that rejects surveillance, social control, and all the bullshit. One exciting model I’ve been discussing with some of these investors would combine traditional VC incentives (fund that one unicorn > scale > acquisition > get rich) with a commitment to resource tech’s open, nonprofit critical infrastructure with a percent of their fund. Not as investment, but as a contribution to maintaining the bedrock on which a healthy tech ecosystem can exist (and maybe get them and their limited partners a tax break).

Such support could—and I believe should—be supplemented by state capital. The amount of money needed is simply too vast if we’re going to do this properly. To give an example closer to home, developing and maintaining Signal costs around $50 million a year, which is very lean for tech. Projects such as the Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany point a path forward—they are a vehicle to distribute state funds to core open source infrastructures, but they are governed wholly independently, and create a buffer between the efforts they fund and the state.

Just as composting makes nutrients from necrosis, in 2025, Big Tech’s end will be the beginning of a new and vibrant ecosystem. The smart, actually cool, genuinely interested people will once again have their moment, getting the resources and clearance to design and (re)build a tech ecosystem that is actually innovative and built for benefit, not just profit and control. MAY IT BE EVER THUS!

[soulbrothershow]

Nia Brown

Five years after the return of Foxy Brown

The city was on fire. Not just with flames—but with fury, frustration, and fear. The police cruisers that once patrolled the neighborhoods with the illusion of order were now the steel chariots of a syndicate gone rogue. They weren’t protecting. They were poisoning. Not with bullets alone, but with synthetic drugs—lethal, untraceable, and flooding the streets faster than hope could escape.

Nia Brown had seen it all. And five years after her godmother, the legendary Foxy Brown, rescued her from the clutches of a sex trafficking ring, Nia had grown into her own.

Now in her late twenties, she was a striking blend of grace and grit. Her hair coiled in a proud halo, her voice was velvet with a razor’s edge, and her fists—well, let’s just say they spoke fluent truth to power.

And tonight, power was about to get its ass whooped.

It began with blood.

Benny Jacobs, a beloved community activist known as “Uncle Benny,” was left for dead behind the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center. His crime? Speaking out at a city council meeting about police corruption and overdoses in the projects.

When Nia saw him in the hospital—his face swollen, ribs shattered, and eyes full of hurt—something in her snapped.

“They beat him like a dog, Nia,” said Sister Carla, one of the elders. “And the mayor ain’t said a damn word. Not even a tweet.”

Nia clenched her jaw. “They think we soft. Think we gon’ beg for mercy that ain’t never comin’.” She looked out the window, her reflection merging with the city’s glow. “Well, it’s time they learn. We ain’t beggin’—we takin’ it.”

Back at her loft, Nia lit a stick of sage and dialed the one person who always knew what to do.

“Talk to me, baby girl,” came the smooth, steady voice of Foxy Brown over the speaker.

“They done crossed the line, Auntie,” Nia said. “They beat Uncle Benny within an inch of his life. And now kids droppin’ from this new dope they got out—call it ‘Blue Fire.’ Real sinister shit.”

Foxy was quiet for a moment. “You ready to step into that heat for real, Nia? This ain’t just survival. This is war.”

“I was born in the fire, Auntie,” Nia said. “Now I’m burnin’ back.”

“Then don’t go in half-cocked. You need people. You need eyes, muscle, brains. You build your circle. And when it’s time, you strike where it hurts the most.”

And so she did.

She rallied a crew the system forgot:

Tank – Ex-military, built like a freight train, had a grudge after his brother OD’d on Blue Fire.

Rico – A tech wiz who could hack the mayor’s email while eating Hot Cheetos.

Nikki Blaze – A former EMT turned street soldier, deadly with a Glock and a gospel hymn.

Preach – A spoken word poet who’d seen too many of his students fall victim to the drug wave.

They met in backrooms and barbershops, plotted in bodegas, and prayed in basements.

And when Nia showed them the blueprint—the stash houses, the dirty cops on payroll, the armored transport trucks—they all nodded.

“It’s time,” Tank said, cocking his shotgun.

The first hit was poetic.

A squad car known for extorting teens in South Central pulled up outside a corner store. Nia and Nikki were waiting. When the cops swaggered inside, the sisters went to work. They slashed the tires, planted a USB in the dash to steal bodycam data, and spray-painted “WE WATCHIN’ NOW” across the hood.

By the time the cops ran out, confused and enraged, Nia and Nikki were gone—ghosts in leather and attitude.

“Let the city feel our presence,” Nia said later. “We the new shadow they can’t outrun.”

But it wasn’t long before the shadow fought back.

Lt. Debbie Murdock—steel-eyed, cold-hearted, and the architect behind the entire police-drug operation—put a hit out on Nia’s crew. She was ex-SWAT and built like a blade in a holster. If the LAPD had a devil, her badge number was burned into its flesh.

She tapped her radio. “Bring me the Brown girl. Alive. I wanna see the fire die in her eyes myself.”

The war escalated fast.

An explosion rocked a narcotics depot Nia and Tank torched. A city hall rally turned into a firefight when plainclothes officers tried to snatch Preach offstage and found themselves overwhelmed by a sea of fists and fury.

Videos spread like wildfire. The people rose.

“THEY’RE TAKING OUR STREETS BACK!” screamed the headlines.

Then came the ambush.

A late-night meeting in a warehouse turned trap. Murdock’s men surrounded the place, guns drawn.

“COME OUT, BROWN! OR WE TURN THIS WHOLE BUILDING INTO ASH!”

Nia peeked from behind cover, breathing hard. “Y’all ready to make ‘em remember?”

Rico grinned, clutching his detonator. “Say the word, sis.”

Nia stepped out, bold and defiant.

“I’m right here, Murdock! And I’m still breathin’!”

Murdock emerged from the shadows. “Not for long.”

She charged. The crowd cleared.

It was Nia vs. Murdock—no guns, just fists and fire.

The fight was brutal. Murdock swung like a brute, but Nia moved with rhythm. She ducked, struck, elbowed, spun. Blood flew. Teeth cracked.

“You think this city belongs to you?” Nia growled, wiping blood from her mouth.

“It does,” Murdock hissed, lunging again.

Nia caught her fist, twisted it, and delivered a knee to the gut. Murdock doubled over.

“This city belongs to the people. And we done bein’ afraid.”

With a final roar, Nia flipped Murdock onto a stack of crates. The woman didn’t rise.

The police arrived. But not to arrest Nia. Something had changed.

The community had surrounded the warehouse. Hundreds deep. Cameras rolling. Ministers, students, grandmothers—all bearing witness.

The Chief of Police stepped forward.

“This ends tonight,” he said. “Lt. Murdock has been relieved. An investigation begins immediately.”

But Nia knew better. “Words mean nothing without action,” she said. “We’ll be watchin’. And if y’all fall short again—we comin’ back.”

Later, as dawn broke over the city, Nia stood on a rooftop, her team around her.

“You did it,” Nikki whispered.

“No,” Nia said, eyes scanning the skyline. “We did it. And this ain’t the end. This is just the beginning.”

Her phone buzzed. A text from Foxy:

Now that’s how you raise hell, baby girl. Welcome to the legacy.

THE END (for now)

“Sister Justice” rides again…

[tanadrin]

Toward revised climates for Sogant Raha

A couple of weeks ago I finally got ExoPlaSim running, as detailed in this post from Worldbuilding Pasta; it's a finicky-as-hell piece of software, but it's also basically the only global climate model that seems remotely accessible to the conworlder who does not actually study this stuff for a living. And since it's pretty slow, especially on my antiquated machine, I looked into renting a virtual server from the same folks who do my webhosting. This is something I've never done before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how incredibly cheap it was--I'm paying about sixty Euro-cents a month at my current usage rates.

With a great deal of trial and error, I've been running climate models of Sogant Raha with different starting parameters. Mostly the failure states are pretty uninteresting--when I reduced the atmospheric pressure by 10% for instance, I had to crank up the CO2 levels a surprising amount or I just got an endless parade of snowball planets. Too much insolation and the whole planet is desert. The sweet spot for a stable climate (with Earthlike nitrogen and oxygen ratios) seems to be around 600 ppm of CO2, which is high compared to the pre-industrial baseline for the Holocene, but well within Earth's historic range.

This is the interpolated global climate map for Sogant Raha based on the last simulation. (Keep in mind the prevailing wind direction is the opposite of Earth's.) Some of the features are exactly what I was hoping for: that nice belt of equatorial rainforests, for instance, and a mild climate even at very high latitudes near the south pole. The rugged terrain of the northern polar regions probably influences the formation of tundra there.

There are some issues that definitely are due to needing to do another pass on the topography data; some mountain ranges are too high, which makes western Altuum too dry, I think. Central Demora (the left of the two small continents in the north-central region of the map) is much drier than I expected, probably due to topography and the low resolution of the model. Several islands are a lot drier than they should be; this is a know issue with ExoPlaSIm, apparently. I'm most surprised by the giant desert on the north end of Rezana (the southern continent in the group of three on the left). That region has comparatively low relief and water on three sides; even if it's not very wet, it should be wetter than that, I reckon. I'll have to dig into the data and see what that's about. And the desert in the northwest of Vinsamaren also makes no sense to me; it's equatorial, and there isn't an appreciable rain shadow in that region.

Sogant Raha is very much not a bottom-up project, in that it started with a group of stories I wanted to tell, and then I started thinking about how to link those stories together in a world that had internal consistency, and only much later did I start looking into stuff like climate and geology, so I'm actually quite pleased that I can get something comparatively close to my original design without any major revisions. The biggest change from my previous biome map is just the planet's axial tilt--instead of being very low, it is now rather high, around 30 degrees. No valleys of eternal night on the poles, which is a pity, but I can still have my south polar islanders who spend half the year sailing from island to island in perpetual darkness.

[what-about-zaladane]

The "Big Four": Why Mercury Deserves a Spot Next to Your Sun, Moon and Rising

The three pillars of modern astrology, after you get past Sun sign astrology, are your Sun, Moon and Rising sign (which I have complicated thoughts about -- but more on that later).

Sun: Your core self, ego and identity

Moon: Your emotional landscape, habits, and inner needs

Rising (Ascendant): How you interact with the rest of the world. How others first see you.

But to me, these "Big 3" leave out a very important part of the human experience: cognition and mental processing. Without it, I believe we can't capture the full complexity of who a person is at their most fundamental, and why they make the decisions that they make.

Why Mercury?

Mercury rules how we think, process, and communicate. It is the superego to the Moon's id and the Sun's ego. (I don't have a clean Freudian metaphor for the Rising, sorry.) It translates our internal motions and worlds (Sun and Moon) to the external (Ascendant). Without considering Mercury we risk ignoring that very crucial bridge between our motivations and our actions. No other planet has this level of foundational role in our psyche -- other than the Big 3.

Mercury helps you process and articulate your emotional needs (Moon)

Mercury helps you understand your own core motivations and desires (Sun)

Mercury impacts how the Rising sign is actually translated to the world -- after all, thinking (or lack thereof) is fundamental to making decisions on how and where to act.

How Mercury Fits In the Big 4

Imagine a two-dimensional axis:

If we consider Mercury (thinking) and the Moon (feeling) as opposites on one axis, and the Sun (internal drives) and the Ascendant (external actions) as opposites on the other, we start to see a workable framework for balancing the respective powers of the "Big 4" in a chart. As I like to call them:

Sun: How you want (motivation)

Moon: How you feel (emotion)

Rising: How you move (embodied expression)

Mercury: How you think (cognition)

For example, we might consider how dignified or debilitated a given planet is, and then we can see where along each axis a native might fall.

That's all mostly incidental though -- what I really care about is incorporating Mercury into the core reading of the chart as a balancing agent between the other three.

With Mercury, we have a richer, more nuanced framework. We can see how the energies and motions of the other chart objects are integrated and expressed via the processing of Mercury -- the integration of inner and outer worlds.

A note on sect doctrine and traditional importance:

A fair point to raise is that traditionally (hellenistically?) the Sun and Moon are considered important due to their centrality in sect doctrine, while the ascendant is critical due to setting the planetary rulers for each house. I'd argue that Mercury also has a soft signal of importance -- it is the only sect-neutral planet that can be a native of either. I'd argue that this points to its utility and function as a "bridging" energy between two diametrically opposed halves (the day and night sect; the inner and outer psychological words)

A Quick Example: Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn has:

Gemini Sun: Restless, observant and clever. Motivated to gather data and make sense of the world. Performs intelligence as allure.

Aquarius Moon: Emotional glass walls -- she watches, analyzes and retreats. Needs emotional freedom but fears it. A coolness to this placement.

Leo Rising: A sparkling icon, a force of expansive personality, a walking light source. Projects warmth, sensuality and confidence to everyone around her.

But the addition of her Gemini Mercury shows how she takes her Big 3 personality (charismatic, emotionally complex, and deeply creative) and filters it through her deep intellectual curiosity, wit, and remarkable communication and negotiation skills. Without Mercury, we don't have a clear window into how emotion and personality are translated into words and actions.

Mercury is how her Sun learned to articulate itself.

It's how her Moon kept intellectual distance from the pain.

It's how her Rising crafted a language of seduction and softness.

Mercury-Moon-Sun-Rising: An Active Feedback Loop

I'm borrowing here from my limited knowledge of psychological systems theory, so forgive me if I mis-step.

With Mercury in place, we can model identity as an adaptive feedback system rather than a static map.

Moon triggers feelings -> interpreted by Mercury

Mercury builds narrative -> energizes or inhibits Sun motivation

Sun expresses intention -> channeled through Rising action

Rising behavior leads to experience -> which re-informs and triggers Moon

Loop complete. When you're well-integrated, the cycle hums along. When you're fractured or "unhealed" one part hijacks the loops or shuts down the others. That is the client story every chart is showing.

Try It Out Yourself!

Try reading your chart with Mercury as part of your core system. You can ask yourself some questions:

How do you process what you feel? (Moon)

How do you think about and negotiate your desires? (Sun)

What story do you consciously tell when you step out into the world? (Rising)

That's Mercury. That's cognition as a bridge.

A Quick Note on Rising Sign

I disagree with the idea that your rising sign is solely "your mask" or affects only your 1st house. In fact, your rising sign is the key to the rest of the chart -- how sign rulership over every house clicks into place (especially in the Whole Sign System). I'm currently writing up a post about my problems with the Rising Sign and my suggestion that we expand our view into a Rising Archetype, divorced from a single sign and instead incorporating all 12. More later! :D

[pancaketax]

What Remains | Chapter 18 The Hunt (Tony Stark x M! Reader)

TW : Detailed depictions of injuries and abuse. Mentions of past abuse Summary : Tony Stark becomes something beyond human , a machine driven by icy rage, relentless focus, and a singular goal: to find you. After receiving a horrifying call laced with sadistic cruelty and a scream he instantly recognizes as yours, Stark enters a sleepless, foodless, voiceless trance, transforming his office into a war room. Every screen, every algorithm, every ounce of technology is bent to his will in a digital manhunt for your location. When Jarvis finally locates a faint signal in an abandoned warehouse, Stark launches without hesitation, donning a specialized combat suit built for one purpose: ending this.

word count: 16.1k

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter Stark hasn’t closed his eyes. Not for a second. He hasn’t swallowed a bite, hasn’t taken a sip of water. He hasn’t moved from his desk since the exact moment that voice slithered into his ear, slick and jagged like a rusted blade. Since that obscene breath passed through the line, that whisper soaked in menace and sadistic delight. Since that scream that raw, flayed scream, human, far too human ripped from a throat he knows too well, just before silence fell, sharp as a guillotine. Something broke then. Not in him. No. Something froze.

He’s no longer a man, not really. Not in this suspended moment, where even time seems too afraid to move forward. He’s become engine. Mechanism. Open-heart alert system. His blood doesn’t circulate it pulses, furious, carried by a cold, methodical, almost clinical rage. He is anger, but an anger without shouting. An anger that thinks, that calculates, that watches, that waits. A storm contained in a steel cylinder, ready to explode, but for now channeling all its violence into the glacial logic of action.

In the office, the tension is almost tangible. The air feels charged, saturated with something indefinable a blend of ozone, electricity, and pure stress. Every surface vibrates slightly, as if the metal itself shared the heartbeat of its occupant. The silence isn’t soothing. It’s oppressive, built on thick layers of concentration, anticipation, restrained fury. Only mechanical sounds mark the space: the faint crackle of a screen refreshing, the nervous clicks of his fingers on holographic interfaces, the low vibrations of the servers in the adjoining room, humming at full capacity. Around him, a dozen screens stream data without pause. Some display ultra-precise satellite maps, sweeping over New York rooftops for any suspicious movement. Others track mobile signals, tracing the latest paths of every device even remotely connected to the target. Still others comb through databases, merge biometric information, detect faces, match voice prints. A thermal image of a building overlays a 3D city map. An audio feed scrolls at high speed, saturated with static. Nothing escapes analysis. Nothing is left to chance.

Stark is motionless, but every muscle in his body is tense. His back is hunched, elbows braced on the desk edge, fingers clenched around the projected interface hovering above the glass. His bloodshot eyes lock onto the central screen without blinking. His eyelids are heavy, but he doesn’t close them. He can’t. Not until the target is found. Not until the one he’s searching for is no longer missing. He won’t allow himself the luxury of weakness. He swore he’d never let anyone be hurt again. And he holds to his vows the way others hold to weapons. The blue glow of the monitors cuts across his face with surgical cruelty. Every shadow on his skin is a confession: fatigue, deep dark circles, drawn features, hollow cheekbones. But these marks don’t diminish him. They add a near-inhuman intensity to his gaze, a ruthless clarity. A will that, for now, eclipses even the most basic biological needs. He hasn’t slept, because he doesn’t have the right. He hasn’t eaten, because the thought hasn’t even occurred to him. His body is secondary. It’s nothing but a vessel for the mission.

He murmurs sometimes. Commands, codes, equations. He speaks to no one, but the AI responds instantly. Every word he utters is sharp, precise, guided by a logic untouched by panic. One name comes back again and again. A biometric file. A GPS identifier. Trackers. Coordinates. He’s no longer looking for a person — he’s hunting a fixed point in the storm. The center of a search and rescue system. And Stark is ready to flatten entire city blocks to bring that point back to him. When the internal alerts go off soft, discreet, almost polite signaling a drop in blood pressure, critical dehydration, or prolonged hypervigilance, he silences them with a flick of the hand. He shuts them off. Nothing exists outside this room, outside this moment. Outside this mission. The rage is there, but tamed, carved into a weapon.

Somewhere, he knows he’s crossing the line. That he’s nearing an invisible boundary. But he doesn’t care. He’s seen too many people die, too many names fade into archives. This time, he won’t be too late. So he keeps going. Relentlessly. He cross-references data, filters messages, follows leads. He digs, over and over, down to the bone. And behind him, the world can tremble all it wants. He’ll hold. Because he made a promise. Because this time, no one will disappear into the shadows without him tearing them out of the night.

His eyes never leave the screens. They’re locked in, anchored, consumed to the point of obsession. They devour every bit of information, every image, every pixel variation, as if he might uncover a hidden confession. Nothing escapes him. No movement, no data, no anomaly in the flow. His pupils, dilated from exhaustion, cling to the smallest detail, hunting a trace, a footprint, a breath left behind by the one he’s chasing without pause. He’s isolated search zones. Redrawn entire sections of the city. Compared every map of New York with thermal readings, overlaying layers like a surgeon operating through urban tissue. He’s overridden protections on multiple private networks without hesitation. Intercepted anonymous communications, analyzed movement patterns, recalibrated his internal software to tailor the algorithms to a single, solitary target. The tools he designed for international diplomacy, for global crisis response — he’s repurposed them now for a personal hunt. A cold war fought in the digital guts of the city.

And always, he comes back to that name. That shadow. That absence. Matthew. A ghost with no fingerprint, no signal, no flaw to exploit. But Stark refuses that idea. No. That kind of man doesn’t vanish. That kind of man always leaves traces — out of pride. Out of carelessness. Out of vanity. And if it means turning the city inside out, if it means digging down to reinforced concrete, to buried cables and the forgotten strata of the network — then so be it. He’s ready to search through the world’s marrow to find what remains. Cables snake across the floor, twisted like raw nerves, connected to makeshift terminals. Holograms hover in the air, pulsing with spectral, slow, almost organic light. The room, once functional and sterile, has lost its ordinary shape. This is no longer an office. It’s a clandestine command post. A digital war cell born out of urgency, powered by fear and brute will. On one wall, an unstable projection flickers: a gridded map of New York, each red zone corresponding to growing probabilities, invisible tension. Alternating, a partially reconstructed file plays pulled from a burner phone. The lines of code shimmer as if still resisting comprehension.

And at the center of it all, him. Motionless. A sculptor of chaos. He doesn’t move an inch, but his mind roars. He calculates, projects, anticipates at a speed even his most advanced AIs couldn’t match. He’s faster than the machines, because this time, it’s not for a global mission. It’s not to protect a council or a treaty. It’s not for peace. It’s personal. And nothing is more dangerous than a man like him when he’s acting for himself. His face is frozen. Carved from stone. No expression filters through. No emotion leaks out. He hasn’t spoken in hours. Not a word. His jaw is locked, clenched. His chin trembles sometimes under the pressure, but he doesn’t give in. His eyelids, heavy with fatigue, blink on autopilot but his gaze stays sharp, cutting. That look… it belongs to a man who’s already made up his mind. It’s no longer a question of if. It’s a matter of when, how, and how much time is left. And above all, of what will be left of the other man once he finds him. He is cold. Precise. Fatally focused. Each beat of his heart seems to align with the hum of the machines. He’s perfectly synchronized with his environment. A machine among machines. He’s become the system’s core. The cold, methodical intelligence of a silent hunt — carried out without rest, without sleep, without mercy.

The door slides open with a discreet, almost timid sigh. As if it, too, understood that this moment must not be disturbed. No sound dares to break the fragile balance of the room. Not here. Not now. Even the walls seem to hold their breath, petrified by the intensity that fills the space. The bluish light of the screens slices through the artificial darkness in shifting shards, casting sharp, vibrating shadows across Stark’s features — like carvings made by a blade. He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t need to look. He already knows. Nothing escapes him. His silence is a barrier, a verdict. He’s there. Frozen. Silent. Unshakable. And around him, the universe seems to understand that something has been set in motion. Something that can no longer be stopped.

Pepper enters without a word. The silence wraps around her instantly, like a heavy veil she doesn’t dare pierce. She says nothing — not yet. Everything about her is more subdued than usual, as if her body has attuned itself to the electric tension of the room. Her usual heels have been traded for flat shoes, chosen mechanically, without real thought. She knew when she got up this morning. No need to read the reports or check the alerts. She felt it, in every fiber of her being — this day would be different. Draining. Slow. Hard. And Tony, on days like this, is not a man to reason with. He becomes a wall. Steel. An unbreachable frontier. This isn’t a state crisis, not one of those media storms they’ve learned to face together, side by side, dressed to perfection with rehearsed smiles. No. This is something else. A silent war. Private. Intimate. And in that kind of war, Tony lets no one in. Almost no one.

In her hands, she holds two mugs. One is for her — a reflex gesture, more for the weight than the content, because she’ll set it down somewhere and forget it immediately. The other is for him. Strong coffee, black, unsweetened, scorching. Just how he likes it. She didn’t ask, didn’t guess. She knows. Because for years, she’s known his silences, his mood swings, his automatic habits. She knows the rare things that bring him a sliver of stability when everything is falling apart. She walks slowly. With that quiet elegance that is uniquely hers. Each step is precise, measured. She avoids the cables snaking across the floor like exposed veins. Dodges the hastily pushed chairs, the luminous angles of suspended holograms hanging in the air, slow and unstable like open wounds. Everything around her pulses, breathes, crackles. The smell of steaming coffee mixes with metallic fumes, with the warm emissions of overheating machines. A fleeting human note in this lair transformed into a war organ.

She approaches. Just a few feet from him now. The blue halo of the screens washes over her, casting cold, almost supernatural shards onto her skin. She still doesn’t say a word. Because she, too, senses what’s happening here. She reads silence like an ancient language. She knows that if she speaks too soon, too quickly, she could shatter everything — the balance, the tension, the fierce concentration holding him upright. Tony doesn’t even turn his head. He doesn’t need to. He knows it’s her. He saw, without really looking, her silhouette trembling on the standby screen, like a spectral apparition. He recognized her breath — controlled, steady, modulated by habit not to disrupt critical moments. He felt her presence the way you feel a warm current crossing a frozen room: discreet, but undeniable. She’s here.

But he doesn’t move. Not an inch. His fingers keep dancing over the interfaces, his eyes fixed on the data. His jaw remains locked, his posture rigid, unyielding. He doesn’t reject her presence. He accepts it without acknowledging it. She’s part of the setting, part of the very structure of this ongoing war. She is the silent anchor he’ll never ask for, but needs all the same. And she knows it. So she stays. Present. Still. Mug in hand. Waiting for him to speak — or to break. His fingers glide over the holographic interface with almost surgical precision. They graze the projected data blocks in the air, moving them, reorganizing, dissecting them as if trying to carve raw truths buried under layers of code, pixels, and silence. A building on 43rd Street. An unusual thermal signature spotted at 3:12 a.m. A encrypted phone line briefly located in South Brooklyn, before vanishing into a labyrinth of anonymous relays. He isolates. He cross-references. He sorts. He discards. He starts again. Every manipulation is an act of war. He develops a thousand hypotheses per minute, evaluates them, abandons them, replaces them. A thousand leads, a thousand fleeting micro-truths, vanishing as soon as he tries to fix them. And always, that voice in his head. That twisted, wet breath haunting him since the call. That scream — shrill, inhuman. That panic. And the silence that followed. The kind of silence only blood knows how to echo.

Pepper, still silent, watches. She hasn’t moved since entering. Her eyes shift from the screen to Tony’s face, then to his hands. She sees what he refuses to admit: his movements are less precise. They tremble sometimes. Nervous flickers, involuntary, imperceptible to others — but not to her. There’s that tiny jolt in his palm when two images overlap without matching. That subtle twitch of his fingers when the algorithm returns an empty result. That tension in his joints with every failure, every dead end. She takes a step forward. Slowly, silently. She places the mug at the edge of the desk, just within his field of vision. Not too close, not too far. She sets it where he could reach for it without thinking, by reflex, if some part of him still remembered how to drink something. If his lips still knew how to welcome anything other than orders. But deep down, she knows he probably won’t. Not now. Maybe not at all. She doesn’t touch him. Doesn’t interrupt. But her eyes never leave him. They linger on his neck, that taut, rigid line, almost painful. On his shoulders, hunched forward, drawn tight like bows ready to snap. She reads the exhaustion in the way his muscles clench, in how he holds his breath when results elude him, in that violent stubbornness that keeps him from stepping back — even for a second.

Then she speaks. Barely. Her voice is a whisper. A caress in a space saturated with tension. A suspended breath, respectful. As if she were speaking to a wounded animal, to a raw heart that a single harsh word might cause to shatter.

— "You should drink something."

No reproach. No judgment. Not even any real expectation. Just an invitation, soft, almost unreal in this room ruled by the cold light of screens and the hum of machines. A reminder, simple and human, that he still has a body. That he’s still a man. Not just an overheated mind, a burning brain, dissociated from everything else. She doesn’t expect a response. She doesn’t even want one. What she’s offering isn’t a solution. It’s a breath. An interlude. A hand offered at a distance, without conditions, in the eye of a cyclone she can’t stop — but refuses to abandon. Stark doesn’t answer. The silence remains, impenetrable. But she sees it. That blink. Singular. Slow. Almost lagging. Like a discreet malfunction in an otherwise perfect line of code. A micro-event, almost invisible but for her, it means everything. He heard her. He understood. Somewhere beneath the layers of adrenaline and frozen focus, her words registered. But he can’t stop. Not yet. Not while what he’s searching for remains out of reach.

She moves a little closer. Her steps are slow, calculated. The slightest movement could shatter the fragile equilibrium he maintains between lucidity and overload. She skirts the screens projecting a relentless flow of data, passes through the light beams of overlapping maps, walks through the holograms dissecting New York in real time: facades, sewer lines, rooftops, drone paths, shifting heat points. A fractured digital world, reconstructed for a single mission. And she, the only organic presence in this sanctuary of glass and light, walks forward until she’s beside him. Upright. Calm. Unshakable. She stands there, just a meter away. A silhouette in the bluish light. A presence. An anchor. Non-intrusive, but constant. And in that data-saturated silence, she looks at the screen in front of him. Blurry images flash by. Figures captured by an old security camera. Red dots blink in the darkness of a poorly mapped basement. Nothing conclusive. Nothing obvious. But she sees beyond that. She’s not looking at the screen. She’s looking at him.

She sees what he doesn’t show. What he himself struggles to ignore. That back, a bit more hunched than before. That hand clenched around the desk edge, knuckles white with tension. That breath, irregular, barely perceptible — but betraying an inner fight. That exhaustion, layered in invisible strata, like ash over an ember that refuses to die. He’ll never admit it. That’s not an option. But she knows. He’s burning out. Eroding. Slowly bleeding out everything that keeps him human. So she acts. Gently, but without hesitation. She reaches out. Picks up the mug left on the edge of the desk, still faintly steaming. And she moves it. Places it right in front of him. Where his gaze can’t avoid it. Where his fingers could reach it without thinking. A mundane gesture, almost insignificant. But heavy with meaning.

— "You need to stay sharp." Her voice is soft, but firm. It cuts through the thickness of the moment. "If he’s counting on you, he needs you at your best. Not collapsing."

He stays still for another second. Then, slowly, his gaze lifts. Like he’s returning from a far-off place, from a tension zone where the real world no longer reaches. He looks at her. Directly in the eyes. And she sees. She sees everything. The fatigue eating away at the edges. The redness at the corners of his eyes, signs of brutal sleeplessness. But most of all, that clarity. That burning precision still intact in the depths of his pupils. It’s a gaze that doesn’t waver. The gaze of a man broken a thousand times — but still standing. And in that gaze, she reads three things.

Fear. Raw. Visceral. The fear of not making it in time. Rage. Pure. Mechanical. The kind he holds back to avoid destroying everything.

And the promise. Absolute. Irrevocable.

— "I’m going to get him out."

No conditional. No wiggle room. He doesn’t say he’ll try. He doesn’t say if he’s still alive. He refuses to let those phrases exist. He leaves no space for doubt. Because doubt would be a crack. And if he cracks now, he collapses. She nods. Once. That’s all it takes. A silent agreement. A trust she offers him, without questions. Then she places a hand on his shoulder. Right there. A simple contact, but real. Solid. A light, firm pressure. Just enough for him to know he’s not alone. That she’s here. That she will remain here. Even if there’s nothing more she can do. An anchor in the chaos.

— "Then drink."

She adds nothing else. No need. Not now. And then she turns on her heel, leaving behind that room saturated with tension and blue light, walking away in silence, her steps barely audible on the hard floor. She slips away as she came — discreetly, with that silent dignity that’s hers alone. No unnecessary gesture. No look back. Just the quiet certainty that he heard her. That he understood. And that he’ll do what he must. A breath. A second. Then another. Stark remains still. His eyes still locked on the numbers, on the blurry images, on the shattered map of New York pulsing slowly before him. A suspended moment, almost frozen in code and light projections. And then, slowly, as if his body weighed a ton, his fingers stretch out. Slow. Almost hesitant. They brush the mug, grasp it. Raise it to his lips.

One sip. Scalding. Bitter. Perfect.

The taste, too strong, seizes his tongue, his throat, then burns its way down like a reminder. He closes his eyes for a second. Not out of pleasure. Out of necessity. Because that simple contact — the liquid, the heat, the sensation — reminds him that he still exists outside the war machine he’s become. And then, almost immediately, his eyes open again. Latch onto the screen. The map. The hunt. The engine restarts. But behind the invisible armor, behind the hard gaze and automated gestures, the man is still there. Just enough. For now. The mug, barely set down on the desk, hits the surface with a muffled clack. The sound, though minimal, seems to shake the atmosphere. Stark exhales. One of those irritated sighs that vibrate between clenched teeth, that fatigue turns into frustration, and frustration reshapes into buried anger. His fingers snap against the desk, nervously. Not a blow. Just a dry, rhythmic sound. Accumulated tension seeking an outlet, a culprit, a breaking point. Something to strike — or someone. But no one here is responsible. No one except him.

And then, it bursts out.

— "Fuck… why didn’t he activate it?"

The voice is low. But it slices the air like a blade. Sharp. Brittle. It doesn’t need to be loud to carry. It’s so charged with tension that it seems to vibrate in the walls. No explosive rage. No yelling. Just that clean line, that icy edge that says it all. It’s not a question. It’s an unbearable fact. A flaw in the plan. A betrayal of logic. He doesn’t need to clarify. The device, the gesture, the fear behind it all of it is obvious. In the hallway, Pepper has stopped. Without realizing it. As if her muscles responded to that voice before her mind did. She’s frozen. And she understands. She knows too. He’s talking about the device. That small, discreet piece, barely bigger than a coin, that he slipped into an anodized case with a falsely detached air. That neutral tone he adopts when the stakes are too high to admit. He presented it like a gadget. Just another safety.

A thing for emergencies. "Press and hold for three seconds" he said. Simple. Effective. And his location would be transmitted to the Tower in real time, with immediate triangulation and constant tracking. He insisted, without seeming to. Like a father too proud of a dangerous toy. Like a man who’s already lost everything once and won’t let chance roll the dice again. The kind of thing he doesn’t give to everyone. The kind of thing he only entrusts once. And even then. Under the pretense of humor. Veiled in sarcasm. And yet, you didn’t activate it. That thought gnaws at him. Consumes him. Because if it wasn’t forgetfulness, then it’s worse. Then maybe there wasn’t time. Or maybe he was afraid. Or maybe you thought it wouldn’t make a difference. And that Tony can’t accept.

Because the alternative… he can’t even imagine it. He built it in just a few hours. One sleepless night, a few curses, two black coffees, and a diagram sketched on a crumpled napkin. Because he was tired. Tired of not knowing. Tired of not being able to protect. Tired of seeing him wander through New York like a ghost without an anchor, sleeping in sketchy squats, living on the generosity of people as reliable as March weather. He was done with uncertainty, with instability. So he made something simple, small, efficient. A distress beacon. A miniature safeguard. Mostly to protect him from himself. He even tucked a secondary mic inside. Discreet, compressed in anodized metal layers. Inaudible to the human ear. Just a sensor, a passive ear, in case something went wrong. Because he knew it could go wrong. Because deep down, he felt that danger was never far. And now? Nothing. No signal. No vibration. No blinking light. No trace. The void. Nothingness. The shadow of a silence that screams. Abruptly, Stark spins in his chair. The movement is sharp, abrupt. His fingers slam down on the projected keyboard in the air, striking commands, executing code, calling internal logs. He pulls up the history. Checks for connection attempts. Scans the security logs, network access, secondary frequencies. No recording. No triggered signal. No distress call. The device was never activated.

— "It was right there." His voice is hoarse. Slow. Painfully contained. "Within reach. Three fucking seconds. And I could’ve…"

He cuts himself off. Right there. The breath caught. No anger. Not yet. It’s not rage. It’s vertigo. An inner fall. He sees the scene again. Precisely. In the hall, just days ago. He was holding the little device between his fingers, between two sarcastic lines. A detached, mocking tone, as always. Trying not to push too hard. Not to seem worried. He said it with a smirk, hands in his pockets: "Just in case. It beeps, it blinks, I show up. Easy."

And he remembers. That hesitation. The lowered gaze. That muttered thank you, without real conviction. As if it didn’t really concern him. As if he didn’t believe it. As if he was afraid to disturb and didn’t think he was worth coming for. Stark clenches his teeth. Bitterness sticks in his throat.

— "He didn’t get it, did he?"

The question escapes. Not aimed at anyone. Not really. He’s speaking to the void, the desk, the walls. To himself. To the echo in his head.

— "He thinks it only works for others." His voice tightens. Fractures. "That no one comes for him. That he has to wait for it to get worse. That he has to nearly die to justify help."

His fingers slap a screen with the back of his hand. A furious swipe. The images vanish in a spray of light.

— "Shit. Shit."

He gets up. Too abruptly. His chair rolls back. He paces, circles, like a caged beast. A shadow of armor without the armor. He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it without thinking. His gestures are nervous, disordered. He teeters between genius logic and raw emotion.

— "I had him in my pocket," he breathes. "I could’ve found him in under two minutes."

His fist hits the back of the chair. A dry strike. Not brutal. But deep. A dull echo that lingers in the air.

— "But no. He keeps it on him like a fucking keychain. A symbolic thing. A gadget he doesn’t want to use. Because he doesn’t want to be a bother. Because he doesn’t want to raise the alarm."

He suddenly freezes. His breath halts. He stares at the floor as if seeking an answer no data can provide. The silence stretches. Then, in an almost inaudible murmur, rougher, more bitter:

— "He’s convinced no one’s coming."

And that thought. That simple idea. It destroys him from the inside. He closes his eyes. Clenches his fists so tightly his knuckles turn white. He fights. To hold back what rises. He won’t say he’s afraid. He won’t say he’s in pain. That he blames himself until it eats him alive. No. He won’t say it. So he turns back. Resumes his place. His fingers return to the controls. His gaze locks onto the screens. The maps. The fragmented data. What he still has. What he can still control. Because if he can’t turn back time… then he’ll find a way to catch up. No matter the cost. And he mutters under his breath:

— "I’m going to find him. Device or not."

Then he types. Not to write. Not to command. He types like someone striking. As if his fingers could punch through matter, bend the universe, shatter the whole world through the silent keys of a holographic keyboard. Every keystroke is a discharge. A sharp hit. A blow aimed at that invisible wall he can’t break through. A fight of data against the void, of will against absence. He types with an urgency that allows no delay, no hesitation. As if life, somewhere, depended on it.

Because it is.

And in the meantime, silence remains. Insidious. Heavy. The tenacious shadow of the action that never happened. The one that would have been enough. Three seconds. A press of the thumb. And he would have known. He would have moved. He would have run. He would have acted. He would have been there. But no. That absence, Stark feels it lodged in his throat, like acid he can’t swallow. It rises, clings, radiates. It stays, constant, until he brings him back. Until he has proof tangible, irrefutable that it’s still possible. That he’s still alive. The minutes pass. Like blades. Sharp. Precise. Unforgiving.

They cut into his focus, erode his patience, chip away at his certainty. Every second is a brutal reminder that time is passing. And this time, time isn’t an ally. He feels it slipping over his skin like a cold blade that can’t be stopped. But he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t blink. The office is bathed in semi-darkness. The blinds are down, the outside light filtered, as if daylight itself no longer had the right to enter. Only the screens cast their bluish glow on the walls, on the cables, on the opaque glass. And on him. That cold, spectral light slices across his closed-off face in sharp angles. Hollowed cheekbones. Brow etched with tension lines. Lips tight. He looks carved from quartz. Cold. Hard. Unyielding.

His eyes, fixed, barely blink. They follow lines of code, coordinates, overlaid maps, signal analyses, with inhuman precision. His stare is locked. Obsessed. He doesn’t falter. He scans. He waits. His fingers still move. Barely. With mechanical regularity. An almost hypnotic rhythm. They glide over holographic interfaces, brush through data windows, launch diagnostics, cross-reference streams. There’s no hesitation anymore, no improvisation. Only a logical sequence. An algorithm embodied in a man who refuses to give up. He doesn’t speak. Hasn’t for a while. He doesn’t even think — not in the usual sense. Human thoughts, full of doubts, memories, emotions, have been pushed to the background. He leaves space only for function. He calculates. He maps. He eliminates. He acts. Because that’s all he can do. And because as long as he acts, as long as he moves, as long as he searches, he’s not imagining the worst. And the countdown continues — silent, relentless. Invisible but omnipresent, it eats at his nerves like a tourniquet pulled too tight. A constant, dull pressure. There’s no number on the screen, no red blinking timer, but he feels it. In every heartbeat. In every passing minute, every interface click, every breath that’s too short, too sharp. He feels it under his skin like slow-diffusing poison.

Twenty-four hours.

That was the deadline. The ultimatum. Spat in his face with disgusting insolence, with the kind of sneering arrogance Stark knows too well. A provocation. A signature. A trap — not even hidden. A price laid out in black and white. The kind of message sent when you’re sure you have the upper hand. But it wasn’t the money that kept him awake all night. Not the numbered threat. Not the offshore account, not the conditions. That, he could have handled. Bought peace. Hacked the system. Turned the trap back on its maker. That’s not what stopped him from blinking, that jammed his throat, that retracted his muscles like a shock. It’s something else. It’s the image. Frozen. Unstable. Blurry. But recognizable. It’s the sound. That breath. That scream. Distorted by distance. By network static. But raw. Human. Ripped out. So real that even now, he still hears it. He could replay it in his head a hundred times, a thousand. He knows it by heart. The tone, the break in the voice, the burst of brutal panic just before everything was swallowed by silence.

That fucking silence. That’s what’s destroying him. What eats at him. What stops him from breathing normally. The silence afterward. The absolute nothing. That break that said everything, summed everything up. That screamed at him what he failed to hear in time. What he should have seen coming. That silence — Stark will never forgive it. Not the other. Not himself. Then suddenly, a voice slices through the air. Soft. Controlled. Synthetic. Like a strand of silk stretched to the limit, about to snap — but still holding.

— “Mr. Stark.”

He doesn’t even turn his head. He’d recognize that voice among a thousand. It’s been there forever — in his ear, in his walls, in his head. An extension of himself.

— “I’m listening, Jarvis.”

— “I believe I’ve found something.”

A shiver. Cold. Brutal. It shoots up his spine like an electric surge. For one heartbeat, his heart forgets to beat. Then everything reactivates all at once. Adrenaline. Tension. Hypervigilance.

— “Talk.”

Instantly, one of the main screens expands. The map of the city appears — familiar and vast — then begins a slow zoom. Details sharpen. Colors darken. The center pulls back. The frame shifts. Outskirts. Sparse buildings. Wasteland. Finally, a precise point. An abandoned industrial zone. Gray. Timeworn. Forgotten by the world. Drowned in abandonment fog. Where no one looks anymore. Where things are hidden when no one wants them found. Coordinates blink at the bottom of the screen. Precise. Cold. Real.

— “A minimal network activity was detected,” Jarvis continues. “Almost nothing. A very weak signal — just a few microseconds of connection — but enough to leave a trace. It was a disposable phone.”

Stark steps forward. He’s drawn to the map like it’s magnetic. His eyes latch onto the screen, fix on it, hold. He sees beyond the image. Through the ruined facades, under the layers of metal and dust. He wants to believe he can see what’s hidden there. That something is waiting.

— “Can you confirm?”

— “The model’s signature matches what we detected during the call. It briefly connected to a secondary relay antenna nearby. It might’ve gone unnoticed, but—”

He’s no longer listening. Or rather, he hears everything. He registers it all, but his mind is already elsewhere. Locked in. Compressed around a single fact. A single certainty. His thoughts tighten, converge on a single point. A red dot. Blinking. Clear. An abandoned warehouse. No activity for over ten years. No cameras. No patrols. No recorded movement. Nothing. The kind of place you choose when you don’t want to be found. The kind of place where secrets are buried. Or people. And then, a single thought imposes itself. Emerges from the chaos like a brutal flash of truth. A certainty branded into his mind like a red-hot iron.

You’re there.

Not maybe. Not probably. Not possibly. You’re there. His fist clenches. Slowly. Each finger curling until the knuckles turn white. He closes his eyes. One second. One breath. One anchor. Then opens them again. And in his gaze, there’s no more doubt. No more fear. No more wandering emotion. Just steel. Just fire. Just the mission.

— “Prepare everything. Now.”

And in that exact moment, the whole world narrows. There’s no more sound. No more fatigue. No more failure. Only this. A straight line. A single target. A burning urgency. To get you out. Pepper is there. Just behind him. Motionless. Straight as a blade. Her arms crossed tightly against her, in a posture that might seem cold to someone who doesn’t know her. But it’s not distance. It’s a barrier. A dam. A desperate attempt to hold back what she feels rising.

The pale glow of the screens casts his shadow on the floor, long and sharp, like a silent specter frozen in anticipation. Around them, the room is bathed in incomplete darkness, pierced only by the soft flickering blue halos on the glass surfaces — witnesses to this sleepless night that stretches on and on.

His face, usually so mobile, so expressive — the face that knows how to smile even during the worst press conferences, that can reassure with a single look — is now closed. Frozen. Like carved in marble. His jaw slightly clenched. His brows drawn in a barely perceptible but unyielding tension. But what betrays it all are his eyes. A gleam, contained. A discreet fire. Both anxious and annoyed. A light that flickers between anguish and a barely concealed anger.

She watches him. In silence. Lips tight. Shoulders tense. And she knows. She knows exactly what’s going on in his head. She knows the gears, the silences, the calculated movements. She recognizes this posture. This calm. This false calm. This almost elegant stillness that always comes just before impact. She’s seen it once. Maybe twice, in her entire life. And each time, something broke afterward. A wall. A promise. Someone. So she speaks. Not to convince him. But to try and hold him back for just one more moment at the edge of the abyss.

— “You should wait for the police, Tony.”

Her voice is calm. Measured. Perfectly composed. But it cuts through the air like a blade honed too well. It slices without shouting, without striking. It hits the mark. He doesn’t respond. Not right away. He moves. Slowly at first, then with dreadful precision. He reaches for the back of his chair, pulls his leather jacket from it — the one he wears when everything becomes too real, too dangerous, too personal. He puts it on in one sharp, fast motion. Automatic. Without even thinking. Everything is rehearsed. His movements are crisp, stripped of any hesitation. He’s no longer reflecting. He’s in motion.

One hand slides into the side drawer of his desk. The metal barely creaks. He pulls out a small object, barely bigger than a watch case. Smooth. Chrome. Discreet. He inspects it for a fraction of a second, spins it between his fingers, gauges it. His gaze clings to it, focused, as if making sure it’s the right one. Then he slips it into the inner pocket of his jacket. A tracker. A prototype. Maybe both. Maybe something else. When Tony Stark leaves like this, he never leaves empty-handed. And in the suspended tension of the room, in that moment when every gesture weighs like a decision, Pepper feels her heart pound harder. Because she knows, once again, he won’t change his mind. Not this time.

Without a word. He crosses the room like someone going to war. No haste, no visible tension. Just a methodical, silent advance, heavy with intention. Each step echoes faintly on the floor, absorbed by the cold light of the still-lit screens, by the walls saturated with nervous electricity. He heads toward the elevator, straight, relentless, like a guided missile.

— “Tony.”

This time, her voice cuts through the space. Louder. Sharper. She’s dropped the polite calm. There’s urgency in that word, a crack, something tense, fragile. Pepper steps forward, rounds the table. It’s not a command. It’s not a plea either. It’s a disguised entreaty, cloaked in reason, offered as a last attempt to connect. She’s searching for a crack. A hold. Any one. Not to stop him — she’s never held that illusion — but to slow the momentum. To crack the armor. To make him think. Just one more second.

— “This is exactly what he wants. For you to charge in headfirst. For him to have control.”

He stops. His body freezes all at once, mid-distance from the elevator whose open doors wait, patient, like the jaws of a steel beast. Slowly, he turns toward her. Not violently. Not with irritation. But with that icy precision that, in him, equals all the angers in the world. He looks at her. And his gaze is black. Not empty. Not crazed. No. It’s a sharp gaze. Cutting. Shaped like a glass blade, able to slice cleanly without ever shaking. He stares at her, without flinching, without softening the impact. His shoulders slightly raised, chin lowered, neck taut. A compact, tense posture. Not defensive. Not exactly. More like a predator’s. The eyes of a man who sees no alternate paths. Only the target.

— “You think he has control?”

His voice is low. Deep. Vibrating with that particular intensity he only uses in very rare moments — when everything tips, when what remains inside compresses until it becomes unstoppable. Every word is controlled. Measured. Almost calmly delivered. But in their precision, there’s something unsettling. A promise. A fracture forming. Silence falls behind that phrase. Suddenly. A thick silence. Charged. Almost unbreathable. It lasts only a few seconds, but they seem to stretch time. The elevator still waits behind him. The slightly open doors pulse softly, as if they sensed the suspended moment. Then he adds, without raising his voice, without looking away:

— “He made the biggest mistake of his life taking him.”

And it’s not a threat. It’s not provocation. It’s a verdict. A raw, cold truth carved in marble. It’s a fact. And it’s far worse than a scream. Then he turns away. One last time. And he steps into the elevator. He doesn’t look back. Doesn’t leave a phrase hanging. Doesn’t try to reassure. He disappears into the steel maw, and the doors close on him with a quiet hiss. Pepper remains there. Upright. Frozen. Her arms cross a little tighter, as if to hold back something threatening to collapse. The screen lights continue to flicker over her unmoving features, but they’re not what illuminates her. It’s intuition. Instinct. The one that whispers what she already knows deep down, what she’s felt from the beginning. Something is going to explode. And this time, she’s not sure anyone will come out unscathed.

The metallic floor barely vibrates beneath his steps. Just a discreet, restrained resonance, almost respectful. But in the frozen silence of the hangar, each echo seems to strike the air like a muffled detonation. Every step is a warning. A countdown. A declaration of war. The space is vast. Immense. A cathedral of technology bathed in cold, clinical, almost surgical light. The walls, made of reinforced glass and brushed steel, reflect sharp, precise flashes, slicing his shadow with every movement. Nothing here is decorative. Everything is functional. Calibrated. Optimized. Ready to serve. Ready to open, to strike, to launch. Ready to close behind him, too.

Tony moves with slow, controlled steps. Nothing rushed. He’s not running. He’s not hurrying. He knows exactly where he’s going. Every stride is calculated. Controlled. His gaze is fixed straight ahead, unwavering. No detours. No curiosity. His body is tense, but steady. Focused. There is no room left for doubt. At the center of the hangar, the launch platform awaits him. A circle of polished steel, inlaid with white LEDs pulsing gently, slowly, like a heart in standby. The light follows a steady, hypnotic rhythm, as if the structure itself were breathing. It sleeps. But it's ready to awaken at the slightest command. Around him, holographic showcases come to life at his approach. Sensors recognize his presence. Interfaces open by themselves. Images appear, fluid, clear. Silhouettes rise in bluish light, floating like specters of war.

His suits. The most recent. The strongest. The fastest. Masterpieces of power and precision, lined up in military silence. No words. No announcements. They stand there, frozen, waiting, like a metallic honor guard ready to activate at the slightest signal. Majestic. Relentless. Inhuman. They are beautiful in their coldness. Intimidating. Perfect. But he doesn't look at any of them. Not a single glance. Not a hint of hesitation. He passes through them like one walks through a memory too familiar to still fascinate. The suit doesn’t matter. Not this time. He isn’t here for spectacle, or showy power. He doesn’t want to impress, or buy time. He wants only one thing.

Efficiency. Extraction. The end.

His steps remain steady. His silhouette moves alone among the giants of metal. And in his wake, the air seems to vibrate with low tension, restrained anger, pain too vast to be named. The soldier is on the move. And what he’s about to do now… he’ll do it without flinching. His gaze is fixed. Frozen. With an almost inhuman intensity. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t deviate. He aims. His attention is a taut line between two points: himself, and the target. It’s not anger you see in his eyes. That would be too simple. Too mundane. No — it’s worse. It’s frozen resolve. A sharp calm like a scalpel's edge. Clinical determination, purged of raw emotion, as if every feeling had been distilled, compressed into a single objective: locate, neutralize, retrieve. At all costs.

The suit he’s come for… it’s not the one from interviews. Not the one for demos. Not the one that dazzles crowds or makes headlines. This one, he only brings out when someone has to fall. No flash. No light. No declaration. With a sharp gesture, he activates the control interface embedded in the platform. The floor lights intensify, blink once, then a metal ring slowly rises from the ground, encircling him with solemn gravity. Everything remains silent. Nothing overreacts. Everything is perfectly calibrated. Robotic arms unfold around him, in a mechanical choreography of military precision. They don’t tremble. They don’t hesitate. They take position, ready to interlock, to serve, to build the weapon.

— "Omega configuration."

His voice snaps. Dry. Dense. Like a hammer strike on glass. And instantly, the machines comply. Without delay. Without flaw. The first pieces of the suit lock around his legs, securing his joints, enclosing his muscles in layers of reinforced alloy. The boots anchor to his feet with a soft hiss, each plate sliding into place with a perfectly tuned metallic click. Then the chest modules rise, locking over his ribcage. The red and gold lines slowly take shape, forming a symmetrical, ruthless architecture. Nothing is superfluous. Everything is there to protect, to absorb, to strike. The metal climbs along his arms, embeds into his shoulders, clamps onto his back. A vengeful exoskeleton. A body of war. Every movement is fluid, exact. The machine knows his rhythm. It knows his silence. It recognizes this moment when Tony Stark is no longer joking. He lowers his head slightly. The helmet drops with a magnetic hiss. It seals with a muffled chhhk. Instantly, his vision turns red. The interface lights up. Sensors activate. Data streams appear. Code scrolls. Maps. Thermal signals. Local comms networks. Building schematics. Ballistic paths.

He’s inside. He’s ready.

— "J.A.R.V.I.S., send the flight plan."

— "Coordinates locked. Route optimized. Risks assessed."

A moment. Just one. A tenuous silence. Like a held breath. Then Jarvis’s voice, lower, almost hesitant. A soft note. A nearly human tone, as if trying to reach through the metal to something deeper.

— "Tony… you don’t have to do this alone."

Not a tactical suggestion. Not a precaution. An offering. An outstretched hand. But Tony doesn’t respond. Not yet. One beat. Just a suspended moment between question and answer. But it won’t come. Because he’s not. Not alone. Not really. It’s not solitude that lives inside him. It’s worse. It’s that weight, hanging on his chest like an anvil: responsibility. He feels responsible. And that kind of responsibility can’t be delegated. Can’t be shared. It must be borne. Endured. To the end. He’s not doing this because he’s alone. He’s doing it because he’s the one who must. Because he was there when it happened. Because he should have seen, understood, foreseen. And because he will never forgive himself if he arrives too late.

A metallic breath escapes his shoulders. Light, but precise. The thrusters arm with a restrained growl. Internal turbines hum softly, like a beast holding back its power before leaping. The entire platform tenses. A low vibration rises under his feet, echoing the energy condensed beneath his heels. The lights turn orange. The floor opens. Slowly. In segments. Like a mechanical wound revealing the hangar’s nuclear heart. The air grows denser. Warmer. Electrified. Stark bends his knees. His muscles instinctively adjust for the imminent thrust. And then, without hesitation, without countdown, without another word…

He lifts off the ground.

With a piercing roar, the suit tears through the air. Flames burst from his heels, searing the platform, and Tony’s body becomes a comet of metal and fire shooting through the open ceiling, soaring at blinding speed into the already paling night. The hunt has begun.

The sky races around him. A continuous stream, distorted by speed, slashed by incandescent trails. Every inch of the armor vibrates under the strain, every thruster hums with surgical precision. The wind slams into him, compressed, transformed into pure force that only the flight algorithms manage to contain. The city stretches out below. Gigantic. Vast. Insignificant. Skyscrapers blur past like mirages. Rooftops, streets, glowing points of light — all turn into abstraction. But he sees nothing. Not the glowing windows, not the crowded avenues, not the numbers blinking across his heads-up display. Not even the overlaid messages, trajectory readings, or secondary alerts. He sees only one red dot. One destination. One objective. And nothing else exists.

He thinks only of you.

Of your body, twisted under the blows. Of your features, contorted by pain. Of your breath, ragged, torn, like each inhale is a battle against agony. Of your face, bruised, sullied, pressed against a floor too cold, too dirty, too real. He sees the blood, the unnatural angle of your shoulder, the fear diluted in your half-closed eyes. He sees everything. Even what you tried to hide. He still hears that fucking scream. The one he never should’ve heard. The one he should’ve prevented, before it ever existed. A scream you can’t fake. A scream torn from you, raw, visceral. He heard it through the phone, compressed, muffled by your breath, crushed by the violence of the moment. But despite the static, despite the distance, he felt it. Like a blade to the heart. Like a shockwave that didn’t just hit him. It went straight through him.

And in his mind, that sound loops. Again. And again. And again. Louder than any explosion. More violent than a collapsing building. It’s not a memory. It’s a living burn. An active wound. He sees it all again. Every second. Every word. Every tone. That bastard’s voice.

Matthew.

Every syllable spat like poison. Every word sculpted to wound. To provoke. To leave a mark. Not on you — on him. It was all planned. Orchestrated. A performance. A slow, cold, painfully precise execution. Meant for one person: Tony Stark. To hit him. To show him how badly he failed. To push where it hurts most.

And it worked. Fuck, it worked.

He still feels how his throat closed. The exact moment his heart skipped a beat. The absolute void that swallowed him when he realized he was too late to stop it but maybe not too late to save you. That instant shift, when all logic shattered, replaced by one certainty. He will pay. Not for the humiliation. Not for the provocation. But for putting you in that state. For daring to lay a hand on you. And Stark, now, isn’t flying toward a hideout. He’s flying toward an execution. His heart is pounding too hard. It no longer syncs with the armor’s rhythm. It hammers against his ribcage like a primal reminder that, beneath all the metal, despite all the tech, he is still a body. A man. And that body is boiling. His fingers tighten inside the gauntlets. The joints, calibrated down to the micrometer, creak under the pressure. He clenches. Too hard. Pointlessly. As if the pain might return control to him. As if he’s clinging to the sensation of something real. The internal temperature climbs a notch. A brief alert flashes, notified by a beep that Jarvis cancels instantly. He knows. Even the tech feels that something is cracking. That the tension line has reached a critical threshold. The tactile sync grows more nervous, less fluid. Not from failure — from resonance. As if the suit itself were reacting to the rage boiling beneath the metal. As if it knew he’s on the verge of detonating.

But he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t speak. He breathes. And he moves forward. Because rage — real rage the kind that doesn’t erupt but eats you alive, the kind that carves deep and anchors in silence, isn’t fire. It’s ice. A blade. A metallic tension that sharpens second by second. This is no longer about ransom. This is no longer an intervention. It’s not even a mission anymore. It’s personal. Because you… you’re not just some kid he hired. You’re not an intern, not a checkbox on some HR dashboard. You’re not a casting mistake he corrected in passing. You’re not one more name on a list of talent. You’re not a recruit. You’re that lost kid who showed up one morning with bags heavier than your shoulders, a voice too quiet, gestures too small. The one who looked at screens like they mattered more than the world. The one who barely spoke, but worked until you shook. Until you collapsed. Without ever complaining. Without ever asking for help. The one who clung to the work like it was the surface of a frozen lake. Just to keep from drowning. And that’s where it started.

Tony doesn’t know exactly when. When it slipped. When he stopped seeing you as an employee and started caring differently. Started checking if you’d eaten. Turning concern into jokes — but counting the times you said "not hungry." Setting rules. Break times. Making sure you got home. That you slept. That you didn’t vanish into the blind spots. Getting used to hearing you mutter when he worked too late. Paying attention. And now, he realizes it too late. This thing, this invisible thread, clumsy, imperfect, but real… it’s there. Damn it, it’s there. And now, you’re gone. And he’s going to cross fire, smash through every wall, burn everything down to find you. Because nothing else matters now. And that’s what’s eating him alive. Not guilt. Not passing doubt. No a slow burn, rooted deep in his chest. A slow poison, distilled with every heartbeat. Because that little idiot… you had a device. A fucking distress device. Not just any gadget. Not a toy.

A device he designed. Refined. Gave to you. Built in haste, but with care. Meant for this. To stop this. To block the worst. So he’d never have to hear screams like that. So he could get there before the blood spilled. And you didn’t even use it. Not a press. Not a signal. Nothing. You took it all. To the end. In silence. Like always. And that’s what drives him mad. The silence. That fucking habit of suffering quietly. As if it doesn’t count. As if your pain isn’t valid. As if your life isn’t worth protecting. As if pressing a button to ask for help… was already asking too much. As if he wouldn’t have come.

And now? Now you’re in the hands of a madman. A psycho acting out of vengeance, control, power hunger. A man with no limits, no brakes, who already crossed every line. Tony saw it. Heard it. He knows. Tortured. Broken. Gasping. The images come uninvited. Your face. Your features twisted in pain. That ragged breath, barely audible. The weight of your body giving out. The hard floor under your cheek. Blood seeping from a wound he can only imagine. And that look, more felt than seen, somewhere between fear and resignation.

Tony clenches his jaw. So hard his teeth slam together inside the helmet. The sound is dull, amplified by the metal echo. It vibrates through his temples. A muffled detonation ringing through his skull. He wants to scream. To hit something. To do anything. But he stays focused. Rage can’t come out. It’s compact. Controlled. Targeted.

The worst part? He still hears you. That murmur. Between gasps. That muffled breath, fragile, but so distinct. That tone. That voice he knows now. He recognized it instantly. There was no doubt. No room for illusion. He could’ve denied it. Lied to himself. Said it was a mistake. A coincidence. But no. He knew. He knew immediately. And from that moment, something inside him snapped. Not dramatically. No collapse. A clean fracture. Like an overtightened mechanism breaking in silence. Because now, it’s too late to argue. Too late to reason. Too late to call the cops. Too late for rules, procedures, delays.

Matthew is already dead. He doesn’t know it yet. He still breathes. Still thinks he’s in control. Thinks he’s running the show. But he’s not. He’s already finished. Erased. Condemned. Because Tony Stark heard that scream. And that scream changed everything. That scream signed Matthew’s death warrant. And he’s going to make him pay. Inch by inch. Breath by breath. Until he gets you back. Or burns the world down to drag you out of the dark.

When the Iron Man suit finally lands, it’s as if the whole world holds its breath.

A metallic breath explodes beneath the impact, followed by a dull rumble that cracks the already fractured concrete of the ground. The shock ripples through the foundations of the old industrial district, awakening the ghosts of rusted machines, worn-out beams, and gutted walls. Dust immediately rises in thick, greasy, lazy swirls, dancing around him for a moment before slowly settling, as if even it knows not to linger here. The air is saturated. Heavy. It reeks of rust, moldy wood, and decay embedded in the walls. It reeks of abandonment. And worse: expectation. The congealed oil on obsolete pipes reflects faint black gleams, almost organic, like fossilized blood. The ground creaks under his boots. All around him, the environment seems frozen. Trapped in a time that forgot how to die.

Icy wind rushes between the metal structures, howling through broken beams, whistling past shattered windows. It carries the cold of a soulless place — emptied, but not deserted. Not entirely. Around him is nothingness. A heavy, oppressive void. No sound, no light. Nothing lives here. Nothing breathes. Not even a rat. Not even a shadow. As if the rest of the world had the decency to look away. As if even the city itself knew that what was going to happen here… should not be seen. And in that thick silence, saturated with contained electricity, Tony remains still. His body in the suit doesn’t tremble. But everything in him is ready to strike. The HUD displays thermal readings, sound scans, parasitic electromagnetic signatures. Traces. Remnants. Leads.

He ignores them. He doesn’t need confirmation. He looks up. There. Right in front of him. The building. A block of blackened concrete, eaten away by time. It rises before him like a vertical coffin, planted in the ground. Its windows are empty sockets. Its crumbling walls seep with moisture and menace. It’s a carcass. A gaping maw. A lair. The kind of place where people are held. Erased. Buried. And deep inside, somewhere in there, he knows. You’re there. And Tony Stark came to get you.

The windows are shattered, slashed like screaming mouths frozen mid-silent howl. Shards of glass still dangle from some frames, claws of dead light ready to cut. The gutted openings let in a freezing wind that rustles the remains of forgotten curtains, faded, trembling like surrender flags. The concrete holds together only by habit. Cracked, eroded by seasons, cold, rain, and grime. By time. By indifference. Parts of the facade have collapsed in whole sheets, revealing the interior like a raw wound. Rusted beams jut from the gaping holes, still supporting broken, twisted staircases whose steps are gnawed by corrosion. A withered metal skeleton groaning under its own weight.

The scene is saturated with signs of dead life. Hastily scrawled graffiti, some grotesque, some terrifying, scream from the walls like echoes left by shadows. Split-open bags. Scattered trash. Abandoned syringes. A broken stroller, overturned. An old moldy couch under a porch. Traces of human passage, old, sad. But nothing lives here anymore. Everything reeks of neglect. Of misery. And something worse still: violence. That scent doesn’t lie. It seeps everywhere, even into the walls. A stagnant, invisible tension, but palpable. As if the very air had absorbed a memory too painful to vanish. An echo of blows. Of screams. Of fear.

Inside, it’s swallowed in thick, grimy darkness. No light. Just the blackness, mingled with dust, rot, and silence. But he doesn’t need light. Doesn’t need to see. His scanner activates instantly. The interface opens in a silent click, layering across his HUD. Schematics align, partial blueprints of the building take shape in 3D. Partial plans, modeled reconstructions from thermal scans, wave sweeps, mass detection. Heat sources appear. Faint. Distant. Unstable. And then, deep in that rusted steel maze, cracked concrete, and rotten silence… a thermal signature. Human. Residual. Nearly gone. A blurred point, nestled in a windowless room, behind thick walls. A trace. A breath.

Tony clenches his fists.

The sound is minimal. A quiet metallic creak, but full of tension. The gauntlets respond to the pressure, contouring his restrained rage, absorbing the shock. He doesn’t need confirmation. Doesn’t need to see more. Doesn’t need to wait. He knows. His instinct — that damn sixth sense he spent years mocking — screams through his body. It’s here. This rat hole he chose. This rotten theater for a filthy ransom. This stage for torture. A place not built to hold… but to break. To terrify. To harm. A bad choice. Tony approaches.

One step. Slow. Calculated. Methodical. Every movement is measured. The suit follows without fail, amplifies his stride, makes the ground tremble with each impact. Metal boots pound cracked concrete like war drums. A warning. A sentence. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t need to. Matthew’s time is already counted. His sensors scan blind spots. He identifies exits, access points, high ground. He’s already plotting firing lines, breach paths, fallback routes. He thinks like a weapon. Like a strike. Because he’s no longer just an angry man. He’s become a projectile. A terminal solution. A promise kept too late. And inside… someone is about to learn what it costs. To lay a hand on you.

He pushes the door with a sharp, decisive gesture. The metallic impact creates a brutal clang, and the battered frame wails in a piercing screech. The sound is long, grotesque, almost human. It slices the air like a cry ripped from a bottomless throat, the shriek of a grave forced open, or a coffin pried too late. The metal scrapes, shrieks, protests — but obeys. Before him, the hallway stretches. Long. Narrow. Strangled between two walls dripping with damp. The air is dense, fetid, soaked with stagnant water and ancient mold. A cold breath seeps from the walls, icy and clinging, sneaking into the suit’s seams as if to slow him, to warn him.

The walls are alive. Not with organisms, but rot. Dark mold clings to them, spreading in irregular patterns like necrotic veins. It crawls across the concrete, invades corners, slips into cracks. In places, the plaster has given way, reduced to gray dust. Beneath, twisted, rusted rebar protrudes — like broken bones, as if the building itself had been tortured, split open. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling, bare. Dirty. Its globe yellowed by time, its sickly light flickers intermittently. Suspended from a wire too long, too thin, it dances with every draft like a rope ready to snap. It blinks. Once. Twice. The yellow halo it casts wavers, bleeding against the walls. The shadows it throws stretch, distort, crawl along the ground. Shapes too long, too fluid, as if the walls themselves breathed beneath the dying light.

Tony doesn’t slow.

He doesn’t hesitate. His stride remains straight, steady, heavy. Each step echoes off the floor, amplified by the armor’s metal. Debris cracks underfoot: broken glass, plaster fragments, splinters of forgotten furniture. Every sound ricochets in the narrow hallway, trapped between the walls like a muffled volley of gunfire. But he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look around. He advances. Like a metronome. His eyes never leave the end of the hall, even as everything around seems to want to swallow him, smother him. He sees the corners, the ajar doors, the stains on the floor, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t deviate. He walks this hall like a trial. A purgatory. He knows hell waits ahead. He feels it.

And he’s ready to tear it open with his bare hands. Each step is a countdown. Each breath, a burning fuse. Each heartbeat in his chest, a war drum. He knows what he’ll find. Maybe not the details. Maybe not the form. But the essence. He knows the scent of blood is there, somewhere. That fear has left its trace. That pain has seeped into the walls. And he knows that you… you’re at the end. You’re there, in the dark, at the end of this sick corridor. Maybe unconscious. Maybe barely alive. But you’re there. And that’s enough. Because even if the entire world has to burn for him to find you,

Stark walks down that hall like a blade sliding into a wound. Slowly. Silently. Without flash, without unnecessary sound. He doesn’t strike. He infiltrates. He dissects. Every step is measured, controlled, charged with clinical precision. The weight of his body, perfectly distributed, flows with the suit’s supports. His boots barely graze the floor, but even that friction seems to vibrate through the air, taut with tension. Tension is everywhere. In his muscles, locked beneath the metal. In his jaw, clenched to the point of pain. In his nerves, on maximum alert. He’s taut as a bowstring. Like a weapon whose safety was disengaged long ago. Even his breathing is suspended. He hardly breathes. He’s sunk into a slowed rhythm, between apnea and absolute focus.

Then the smell hits him. Not softly. Not in waves. Brutally. A wall. An invisible punch to the chest. Heavy. Thick. A metallic stench clings to his throat, invades his nostrils like a warning. Blood. Not fresh. Dried. Hours old, maybe. Mixed with damp, with the building’s mold, with dust saturated with dead micro-organisms, with the stagnant rot that infests places where nothing lives anymore. The smell of a trap. The smell of pain. His stomach tightens. Not from fear. From rage. His heart doesn’t race. It slows. As if syncing to the place. He shifts into a deeper, duller, more dangerous frequency. His pulse beats like a drum ready to strike.

Above him, the bulb still swings — a pathetic relic of a once-functioning past. It crackles, flickers, sputters to life at intervals. Each pulse casts sickly light across cracked tiles, warped walls, and scattered remnants of a forgotten world. The shadows stretch, shrink, crawl along the walls like filthy hands. Even the walls seem to hold their breath. He steps forward again. One step. Then another. Every movement is fluid, silent, nearly unreal. His visor scans relentlessly. It overlays stacked data layers, displays thermal signatures, rough volume outlines, hidden masses behind walls. He examines blind spots. Gaps. Floor markings. Broken hinges, scuff marks on wood.

He doesn’t see Matthew yet. But he feels it.

Like a presence. A greasy vibration in the air. A low tension running beneath the walls like a rogue current. A sensation that cuts through him, visceral. It’s not intuition. It’s certainty.

He’s here. Somewhere.

And then he sees you.

You.

There’s no sound. No warning. No orchestral swell. Just that brutal, abrupt moment when the image slaps him in the face like a blow that nothing can soften. You're there. Not standing. Not sitting. Collapsed. Against the wall. No — not against. You’re melded into it. As if your body were trying to dissolve, to disappear. A trembling mass, dirty, slack with pain. No longer a person. No longer a boy. Just a heap of living, broken flesh. A dislocated silhouette in the dark. His brain takes a moment to understand what he’s seeing. This isn’t you. Not the you he knows. It’s something else. A ruined version. And the violence here isn’t hypothetical. It’s tattooed on you. Your arm is twisted.

Not bent. Twisted. At a monstrous, impossible angle. The elbow joint reversed. Bones displaced under stretched skin. Something that should only appear in accident reports. Not here. Not like this. Your shoulder has collapsed. Your hand, almost detached from the rest, barely trembles.

And your face... It takes Tony a second. Just one. But it lasts an eternity.

He doesn’t understand right away. He recognizes nothing. No features. No familiar contours. Just damage. Open wounds, horrible swelling, bruises stacked upon bruises. Your eyes — if they’re still there — are buried under hematomas. Your lips are split. Your right cheek is so swollen it distorts the entire shape of your skull. It’s a mosaic. A work of pure cruelty. And the blood… It’s still flowing. Not much. Not in spurts. In seepage. Slow trickles, like a steady leak. It slides down your temple. Your mouth. Your neck. It’s sticky. Matte. It ran, dried, and ran again. It’s on your throat. Your collarbone. Your chest. You’re soaked.

Not with sweat. With blood. With fear. With the filth of the floor. Your clothes are just rags now. Torn down to the skin. Deep tears are visible, laceration marks, fingerprints, nails, blows. Your hands are open. Literally. Cut. Your palms are cracked, marked by a desperate attempt to defend yourself. Your fingers are splayed as if caught in a frozen spasm. Your knees are red, shredded. Raw flesh peeks through peeled skin. And your back... He doesn’t even want to look. He can guess. He knows what he’ll find there. Marks. Burns. Blows. Traces of what no one should ever do to another human being. But he doesn’t look. Not yet. Because then... he sees it. Your chest.

It moves. Barely. But it moves. A breath. Weak. Jagged. Rough. A struggle with every motion. A breath that doesn’t really come out. A choked wheeze. But alive. You’re breathing. You’re there. Still there. And Tony stops cold.His entire body freezes. The armor locks with him, as if the machine itself understood. As if every fiber, every metal plate had turned to stone. Time collapses on him. A crushing weight. A shroud. His heart? It stops. It no longer beats. Just a void. An absence. A pulse. Heavy. Dry. In his temples. His throat. His stomach. What he feels has no name. It’s not fear. It’s no longer even anger. It’s a breaking point. A place in the soul where everything stops. Where everything is too much. Too much pain. Too much hate. Too much regret. Too late. Too far. He’s here. In front of you. And he can’t go back.

It’s a fracture. A rupture in everything he thought he could control. You’re alive. But at what cost? And somewhere, just a few meters away... Matthew is still breathing. But not for long. A cold shiver, sharp as a steel blade, climbs Stark’s spine. He doesn’t push it away. He lets it slide between his shoulder blades, slip under the metal like a warning that what he’s seeing isn’t an illusion, but raw, naked, implacable truth. Yet nothing on his face betrays this vertigo. Not a twitch, not a flinch, not even a blink. His rage, once explosive, has retracted into a clean, focused line. It’s no longer a storm. It’s a blade. Smooth, cold, sharp. A perfectly honed weapon, ready to strike the moment it’s needed. Not before.

His eyes stay locked on you, unblinking, unwavering. Every detail imprints itself in his mind like a photograph branded with hot iron: the grotesque position of your broken arms, the dark brown blood dried in rivulets on your chin, your neck, your chest; your skin, so pale beneath layers of grime and pain it looks almost like that of a corpse; the faint flutter of your chest, a fragile reminder that you haven’t crossed over yet. He sees it all. He doesn’t look away. And he will remember it. Until his last day. And yet, he doesn’t move right away. Everything in him is screaming. Every fiber, every muscle, every electrical impulse of the armor and his own body calls him to you, to rush, to drop to his knees, to check your pulse, your breath, to place his glove at your neck, to say your name. But he doesn’t give in. He is Tony Stark, yes. But here, now, he is also Iron Man. And Iron Man knows how to recognize a trap. Instinct needs no explanation. He feels that grimy vibration in the air, that invisible weight that warps the atmosphere around you, that intent still lingering, ready to pounce. He knows he’s not alone.

So he advances, but his way. Not slowly out of hesitation, but with control. One step. Then another. Controlled. Silent. The floor crunches beneath his boots, and even though the armor absorbs most sound, here, in this room saturated with shadows and stench, every movement rings out like a barely contained threat. The air is still. The walls seem to listen. The silence, tense, fills with static. He stops a few steps from you. Just close enough to see you breathe, to catch that tiny tremor in your ribcage, that breath that fights, clings, refuses to yield. Just far enough to strike, to raise his arm, to hit in half a second if something emerges. Because he knows: this is the moment Matthew is waiting for. The moment he thinks he can finish what he started. But he’s about to learn that this time, he’s not facing a wounded child. He’s facing Iron Man.

His eyes scan the room relentlessly. Every detail is absorbed, analyzed, memorized. The walls, covered in peeling paint, reveal patches of bare stone, gnawed away by damp. Mold streaks stretch up to the ceiling, which has collapsed in places, letting frayed wires dangle alongside crumbling fragments of plaster. Rusted pipes run along the walls like dead veins, slowly bleeding black water into the corners of the room. A distant drip echoes, irregular, distorted by reverb, like the heartbeat of a body already emptied of everything. The air is thick. Stagnant. It smells of oil, blood, mold, and abandonment. This isn’t really a place anymore. Not a living space, not a shelter. A dead place. Forgotten. A pocket outside of time, perfect for monsters to hide in.

And Stark knows it. It’s too quiet. The space is frozen in a dull anticipation. The smell is too sharp. The scene, too carefully placed. Nothing here suggests an accident. Everything has been calculated. And he hasn’t come to negotiate. He’s not here to understand. He’s not here to reach out. He’s here to end it.

So he speaks. Not loudly. Not shouting. His voice slices through the silence like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. Low. Slow. Sharp. It doesn’t tremble. It doesn’t seek to impress. It states. It targets. It’s the voice of someone who’s gone beyond fear. Who knows the war is no longer a risk. It’s happening. It’s here. Present. Inevitable.

— "That’s your big plan, Matthew?"

The words hang in the air. Clear. Sharp. And they cut. The silence that follows is even sharper. It relieves nothing. It stretches. It weighs. It presses on the nerves like a finger on an open wound. A silence with a taste. That of blood just before the blow. That of a held breath, of the instant suspended between lightning and thunder. A silence ready to rupture. And Stark is ready to tear through it. He kneels.

The suit exhales softly, like a restrained sigh, when Tony bends a knee to the ground. Metal meets filth, dust, and the invisible fragments of an abandoned world in an almost solemn hiss. It’s not a brusque gesture, nor heroic. It’s a humble movement. Precise. One knee placed in the grime of a ravaged sanctuary, a cathedral of pain frozen in time, where the slightest sound feels blasphemous. He places himself near you. Within reach of your voice. Within reach of your breath.

Above you, the light flickers. It trembles at irregular intervals, swaying like a sick pendulum. It doesn’t truly illuminate. It hesitates. As if it, too, refused to fully expose what it reveals. The scene seems unreal. Suspended. Out of the world.

Stark only sees you now. His eyes are on you. At last. Truly. He no longer sees you through the lens of worry or authority. He doesn’t see an employee in distress, nor that lost kid he tried to protect from afar without ever really getting involved. He doesn’t see a responsibility. He sees you. The body you’ve become. This collapsed, mutilated body, barely breathing. That breath, ragged, whistling, clinging to life like a flame battered by wind. The position in which you’ve fallen, curled in on yourself, speaks of an instinct stronger than thought: to hide, to disappear, to avoid another blow.

Tony doesn’t move. Not yet. A long moment suspended in a bubble of silence. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. Only his fist, slowly, curls. A controlled movement, silent, without tremor. A gloved hand, silently absorbing the rising tension, the seething rage, the refusal to accept what he sees. He observes you. He scans every visible patch of skin, every line of your battered face, every gap between the tatters of your torn clothing. He doesn’t want to miss anything. He wants to know. To understand. To see what you’ve endured. He’s ready for everything — except looking away. And what he discovers freezes him.

The recent wounds, he expected. He had imagined them, feared them. The swollen bruises, the black and violet hematomas covering your ribs, your stomach, your face. The clean or jagged cuts, open or dried. The blood clotted at the corner of your mouth. The split lip. The torn brow. Skin ruptured in places, stretched by swelling. All of that, he had seen coming. He had already heard the echo of the blows. Guessed the brutality.

But what he hadn’t expected… were the other marks.

The ones left by someone other than Matthew. The ones no sudden rage could justify. Scars. Fine. Old. Some nearly faded, white, invisible to the untrained eye. These delicate lines, precise, snake along your forearm, disappear under the fabric, reappear on your side. He recognizes some of them. He knows those clumsy cuts, those poorly closed edges. He’s seen them before. On other bodies. In other contexts. He passes a hand — slow, without touching — over your chest. A gesture both useless and necessary. An attempt to understand without harming, to see without interfering. Your top is torn. Not by accident. Deliberately. As if someone wanted to expose your fragility. As if your skin had become a trophy. A message. Your ribs are streaked with deep bruises, a blue so dark it looks black. These were blows delivered methodically. Not to kill. To mark. To leave a print. And beneath that recent violence, other, paler shadows appear. Older bruises, half-faded. Hidden scars. Belt marks. Traces of falls, perhaps. Of repeated gestures. Systematic ones. Not wild brutality.

Habit. Not battle scars. Survival marks. And Tony feels something fold inside him. Slowly. Painfully. As if the steel of his suit tightened, turned inward, crushing his bones, compressing his breath. He inhales, despite everything, but the air is too heavy, too foul. He feels cold sweat on his neck. The taste of metal on his tongue. This didn’t start yesterday. Not even this week. Not even this year. And the hatred rising now is no longer a fire. It’s a collapsed star. A core of pure fury. A point of no return.

— "Fuck..." he breathes.

The word slips from his lips in a hoarse whisper, no louder than a murmur. It doesn’t snap. It doesn’t strike. It falls. Heavy. Exhausted. It’s not an insult. It’s a prayer. An apology. A confession. A verdict. He could have said your name. He could have screamed. But he no longer has the strength to hide the collapse eating away at his gut. That single word carries it all: the guilt, the shame, the shock, the poorly disguised love, and that powerlessness he hates more than anything in the world. His eyes rise slowly to your face. He studies you, searches, hoping for a sign, a crack in that absence. You’re still unconscious. Or maybe just trapped in your own body. Your eyelids, heavy with pain, barely twitch. As if you’re fighting inside a nightmare too real. Your lips, cracked and swollen, part in an almost imperceptible motion. Sounds escape. Weak. Shapeless. Phantom syllables, swallowed by your raw throat, crushed by the shallow breath of survival.

You’re fighting.

Even now, half-dead, on your knees in the mud, in the blood, in the fear — you're still fighting. And Tony, he doesn’t understand how he missed it. How he could’ve overlooked it. He thought you were folding because you were fragile. That you were falling because you were weak. He discovers now that you never stopped getting back up. Again. And again. And again. And that by climbing back up alone, without help, without a hand to reach for, you broke. Slowly. Silently. From the inside out. Another anger rises in him. It doesn’t explode. It doesn’t burst like an uncontrollable flame. It’s slow. Deep. A fury that doesn’t make noise as it climbs but anchors in his gut, between his ribs, in every fiber of his being. It doesn’t burn. It freezes. A precise, surgical anger. Against Matthew, of course. Against the monster who did this to you, who turned your body into a map of pain. But not only.

Against himself. For not seeing it. For not wanting to see. For believing his rules, his demands, were enough. For forcing you to maintain an image when you were already falling apart. Against the system that let you slip through. Against the entire universe that abandoned you without so much as a flinch. Against the silence. Against the averted gazes. Against the excuses. Against everything that brought you here, barely breathing, bleeding in a place no one should know. And this anger — he keeps it. Not for the night. Not for the moment. He keeps it for what comes next. Because this isn’t a mission anymore. It’s not even vengeance. It’s an answer. A cold, precise, implacable answer.

His fingers spread. Slowly. As if releasing something too heavy to contain any longer. Then, just as slowly, his hand closes. Not in rage. Not to strike, nor to threaten. But as one seals a vow. As one locks a promise in the palm, sheltered from the world, where it can never fade. A discreet gesture, small, but charged with immense weight. He leans forward. Just a little. Just enough for his face to draw closer to yours, his features blending into the trembling light, his breath almost brushing your skin. He doesn’t try to wake you. He doesn’t disturb the fragile silence. Only to be closer. To speak for you, and only you. And in a breath that belongs only to him — hoarse, broken, dragged up from deep within — he whispers:

— "I’m sorry..."

It’s not a phrase said lightly. Not a line of circumstance. The words struggle to come out, each one bearing the weight of a collapsed world. They don’t shake. They crash. Heavy. Dense. Inevitable. And it’s not for the blows. Not for the broken bones, the bruises, the wounds, the blood. Not for the absence of rescue, the nights you waited without response, without a call, without presence. Not even for the hesitation or delays. Not for the wavering between compassion and distance. No. That’s not what he regrets. It’s something else. Deeper. More insidious.

He apologizes for what he didn’t see. For everything right in front of him that he ignored. For all the times he looked at you without really seeing you. For all the moments he should’ve understood, read between the silences, the tight gestures, the small changes in your voice, the blankness in your eyes. He’s sorry because he should’ve been the one to know. The one who reached out without being asked. He didn’t. And he knows it. You never told him. Not clearly. Not with words. But he doesn’t blame you. He blames himself. His inattention. His blindness. His comfort. Because he should have known. He should’ve seen past the surface, not settled for what you showed. He’s a genius, after all. He cracked codes, AI, government secrets. But he didn’t read you. You.

And now he sees you. Really sees you. You're here, lying down, broken, beaten, emptied to the bone. You carry the recent scars — but also all the old ones. The ones that tell something else. Another story. A life that didn’t begin tonight. Pain accumulated like strata in rock pressed too long. Blows someone made you believe were normal. Silences you were taught to keep. Constant adaptation, until survival became a reflex. Each scar is a sentence. Each bruise, a word from the story you carried alone, your throat tight, your body tense. And Tony is only just beginning to understand. Not everything. Never everything. But enough for the void to open beneath his feet. Enough for something to snap. For guilt to root itself where it will never leave. It’s not just Matthew. It’s not just this night. It’s everything that came before. This whole life you lived in the shadows, moving through with false smiles and stiff gestures. And he didn’t see. He didn’t know. He didn’t reach out.

He feels that truth in his fingers, in his tight throat, in the strange way his vision blurs without fully knowing why. And the anger returns. Deeper. Colder. But this time, aimed only at himself. Because he should’ve been there. But now that he is — now that he sees you — he swears, without even needing to say it, that it will never be too late again. Not a second time. Never. Stark doesn’t turn his head. Not right away. He stays still, locked in a perfectly controlled posture, his chest still bent over you, his body still tensed above yours like a shield of steel. But his eyes narrow, just slightly. An imperceptible detail to anyone else. An almost microscopic change, but revealing. He saw it. Or rather, he sensed it. Not a clear movement. Not a sharp sound. Just a shift. A faint vibration in the air. A thermal fluctuation, too precise to be natural. A flicker in the visual field, where there was nothing seconds ago.

The suit confirms it silently. A variation in air pressure. A subtle thermal footprint. A disturbance in the suspended particles. Something moved. Someone. In the shadows. He already knows. He doesn’t need confirmation. No detailed analysis. His instinct and the machine speak with the same voice. Matthew is here. He never left. He never fled. He waited. Coiled in the darkness like a knot of hate, hidden behind the ruined structures of the warehouse. A corner too dark for ordinary eyes. But Stark isn’t ordinary. His gaze adjusts. The armor’s sensors recalibrate instantly. Every shadow pixel becomes a map, a data set analyzed in real time. Shapes emerge, unfold, reveal themselves under thermal filters. He sees the silhouette. Humanoid. Crouched. Twisted in animal tension. Almost glued to the damp wall. Motionless — but falsely so. Ready. Ready to strike.

A predator. Or so he thinks. But to Tony, he’s not a beast. Not an opponent. He’s a parasite. A pest. A residue of misdirected hate. A mass of cowardice wrapped in a semblance of human flesh. Nothing more. And he waits. Stark sees it. He waits for the right moment. The right angle. He still hopes. One wrong step. One lapse. One second of distraction. He still thinks he can win. He thinks he can strike from behind. Finish what he started. Reduce further. Humiliate again. He believes this stage is his, that the dark protects him, that fear is on his side. But it’s not the same game anymore. And Stark is no longer the same man.

His fists clench. Slowly. Not in rage. In certainty. A cold pulse runs through the armor, from his shoulders to the thrusters in his forearms. Internal systems activate in silence. Energy builds. Not for show. Not to intimidate. But to strike. Coldly. Deliberately. And yet, he still doesn’t move. He doesn’t break the silence. He remains there, by your side, his body lowered like a barrier. You're still beneath him, fragile, barely breathing. And he stands, in that false calm, as the last thing between you and the one who still thinks he can reach you. But this time, there will be no negotiation. No ultimatum. No speech. This won’t be a warning. A chuckle. At first almost imperceptible. Just a scrape, a discordant note in the tense silence of the warehouse. Then it swells. Gains volume. Becomes a clearer sound — thick, mocking, like a bubble of bile rising to the surface. It comes from the shadows. From that cursed corner of the room that even the light avoids, as if refusing to reveal the truth. A place too dark for nothing to be there.

Stark doesn’t move. He doesn’t look up. Not yet. He stays crouched beside you, his body interposed between you and the thing that finally creeps out of its lair. A sentinel. A wall. A blade ready to cut. But his shoulders stiffen. His breath halts. His fingers stop trembling. He listens.

— “You really came in the suit, huh…”

The voice pierces the darkness like a carefully distilled poison. It has that dragging tone, unbearable, dripping with sarcastic self-confidence. It oozes obscene pleasure, filthy arrogance, sick amusement. The kind of voice that wounds before it strikes. It seeps into the air, hungry to exist, to dominate, to stain.

Matthew steps out of hiding—or what’s left of it. A shadow barely separated from the dark. Just enough for part of his face to appear under the sickly glow of a dangling bulb. Half a face. Half a smile. Wide. Frozen. Too tight. And his eyes… wild. Shining. Flickering with an unstable light, unable to fix on a single point for more than a few seconds.

— “For him? Seriously?”

He gestures vaguely toward your body on the floor, careless, almost lazy. As if pointing at a gutted trash bag. A carcass of no worth. His grimy fingers tremble slightly, but not from fear. From excitement.

— “The little favorite. The loser. The kid who can’t even breathe without collapsing.”

He takes a step. Slow. Pretentious. Nonchalant. His chest slightly puffed, arms wide, almost cruciform. A show-off stance. A provocation. As if offering himself for judgment, convinced he’ll walk away untouched. As if he’s challenging God himself amid the ruins of a world he helped destroy.

— “You sure brought a lot of gadgets to save a half-broken body, Stark.”

A higher, more nervous laugh escapes him. He doesn’t have full control. He thinks he does, but his words are speeding up. His breath quickens just a bit. A trace of madness laces every syllable.

— “You think all that’ll be enough? The thrusters, the scanners, the AI?”

He stops a few meters away. Far, but visible. Too visible. Grime clings to his clothes, his skin, his hyena grin. His face is gaunt, cheeks sunken, hands filthy. He looks like someone who lives in filth. And carries the arrogance of someone who thinks he’s untouchable. He believes he’s won. That he still holds the cards. That he has the upper hand.

— “You showed up like a superhero. Big savior. Like you actually care whether he’s still breathing.”

He tilts his head. A tiny movement. Almost childlike. Almost mocking. The gesture of a brat waiting for the adult to raise a hand just so he can laugh louder afterward.

Then, in a whisper, lower, crueler, slid in like a needle through skin:

— “Sad. To see you stoop to this.”

That’s when Stark moves. Not a sharp gesture. Not a threat. Just… he rises. Slowly. Very slowly. Each vertebra seems to align with inhuman precision. His back straightens. His shoulders lift. His gloved hands open slightly, fingers spreading, joints clicking faintly. A stance. A charge. But he doesn’t speak. Not yet.

Because Matthew goes on. Because he doesn’t understand. Because he still believes words protect. That taunts disarm. He still thinks Stark is here to play. That this restrained rage is only for show.

— “I mean, come on… look at him.”

He points again. His filthy index finger extended, trembling slightly. Not from fear. From ecstasy.

— “Take a good look at what he’s become. What I made him. And ask yourself what you were doing all that time.”

And that silence after — that void between two breaths… it’s the most dangerous moment. Because right now, Stark doesn’t see a man in front of him. He sees the outcome. The cause. The shadow behind the screams. And this time, he won’t look away. Matthew moves. It’s not hesitation. It’s a reflex. A sharp jolt of intention, of venom, of premeditation. His arm snaps in a motion too quick, too precise to be theatrical. He’s not trying to intimidate. He’s trying to end it. His hand plunges into his jacket with mechanical brutality, the rustle of fabric too sharp, a sound that splits the silence like a silent detonation. A glint of metal slides between his fingers. The black barrel of a gun emerges like a verdict. Cold. Final. He lifts his arm. But not toward Stark. Not at the looming figure of steel, red-lit, poised to strike. Not at the obvious threat, the armored man, the living weapon who could incinerate him with a single gesture.

No. He points it at you. You, still on the floor. You, vulnerable. Shattered. Barely breathing. You’re lying there, more ghost than flesh, your chest struggling to rise, your face drenched in blood—and that’s exactly why he aims at you. Because you can’t fight back. Because you can’t even look away.

The barrel aligns with clinical slowness. A descending trajectory, methodical, unbearable. A deliberate motion, thick with silence, cracking the air like an invisible slap. There’s no tremble of doubt, no hesitation. The quiver in his wrist isn’t fear—it’s anticipation. A sick pulse shooting through his arm, twitching his fingers on the trigger. Obscene pleasure in this total domination. His breath quickens. His eyes gleam. He savors. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Where he’s aiming. How he wants this to end. It’s no longer a threat. It’s an execution. A scene he’s imagined, rehearsed, craved. A twisted revenge. A show where he’s both executioner and audience. And in this suspended second, this instant where everything can tip, he becomes something worse than an attacker.

He becomes a man convinced he’s about to kill. Because he wants to. Because he can.

— “You got the money, then?”

The words fall like a dull-edged blade. No hesitation. No dramatic delivery. Just a string of words spat low, almost casual. Like a logistical question. His voice is dry, flat, stripped of emotion. Verbal mechanics, a routine, a question tossed out like checking an order. But the poison—it's in the posture. The gaze. The barely-contained tension in his outstretched arm.

The gun’s barrel stays still. Perfectly aligned. No longer shaking. Calm. Cold. A disturbing steadiness, almost clinical, like a surgeon ready to cut — except he’s not seeking to heal. He’s aiming to rupture. To erase.

He’s not really talking to Stark. Not really to you either. He’s speaking to himself, to feed the illusion of control he’s desperate to maintain even as he feels the ground slipping. He keeps playing, just long enough to delay the inevitable. To fabricate a role. The one who asks. The one who decides. The one who ends things. But there’s that barrel. Black. Smooth. A heavy promise stretched from his arm. He doesn’t move. He waits for an answer he knows is pointless. He knows there’ll be no deal. No negotiation. But he asks anyway. As if asking is enough to pretend he still owns the scene. As if it can mask the obvious rising in the air like an imminent detonation.

He’s ready to shoot. And it’s not the money he wants. It’s what comes next.

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