#operation dynamo

[captain-price-unofficially]

Still from gun camera film shot by Flight Lieutenant A G "Sailor" Malan, leader of 'A' Flight, No. 74 Squadron RAF, recording his first aerial victory, a Heinkel He 111 over Dunkirk.

[contremineur]

The Dunkirk evacuation or Operation Dynamo was the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26th May and 4th June 1940. The operation commenced after large numbers of Belgian, British and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week Battle of France. In a speech to the British House of Commons on 4th June, Prime Minister Winston Churchill hailed their rescue as a ‘miracle of deliverance’.

text abridged from here

[warpedia]

The Battle of Dunkirk- Miracle of Dunkirk

#BattleeofDunkirk, #EvacuationofDunkirk, #miracleofDunkirk,

Evacuation Dunkirk May 26, 1940 The Battle of Dunkirk, which took place during World War II. Stands as a testament to the indomitable spirit of humanity in the face of adversity. It was a pivotal moment that showcased the bravery, resilience, and unity of the Allied forces as they faced overwhelming odds. In this blog post, we will delve into the events leading up to The Battle of Dunkirk. The…

[alanmalcherhistorian]

Operation Dynamo: The Evacuation of Dunkirk 27 May to 4 June 1940

Operation Dynamo: The Evacuation of Dunkirk 27 May to 4 June 1940

Royston Colour A colourised black and white image by Royston Colour of British soldiers in Dover after being evacuated. Image dated June 1940.

[carbone14]

Canon de 75 mm servi par des soldats français pour couvrir l'évacuation de Dunkerque (Opération Dynamo) face aux allemands - Bataille de Dunkerque - 28 mai 1940

[mangoshorthand]

i know it is meant to be a oneshot but maybe ... "The Pandas and the Conservationist" part 2? haha

The Pandas and the Conservationist Part 2 | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader 6.8k words, Rated E

ASK AND YE SHALL RECIEVE (several months and one nervous breakdown later). Thanks to @thebearmage for helping me with ideas on this one. !SubFive is truly your speciality.

Enjoy the Commission worldbuilding I can't seem to resist leading to a subby Five slutting around in a doomsday bunker. (Also please give me headpats for finding this gif without freaking out. There were so many Five/Lila ones and I feel cold all over).

<< Read Part 1

The Handler was unlike his predecessor in many ways. Where they aligned, however, was in a roach-like ability to take a bullet to the brain and survive.

Unluckily for this Handler, however, he had no metal plate in his skull: there was, irrevocably, a bullet lodged in his frontal lobe. Yet, when he opened his eyes to see a chunk of viscera swinging before them, he felt fine.

Woozy, but fine. 

He had a job to do, that he knew. The board was relying on him to keep things operational. Yes, he had a job to do, and he knew it had something to do with…that guy. 

He racked the 95% of his brain not eviscerated by the bullet and tried to call him to mind. Thinking hard, it came to him that there was definitely a guy…and there was also a woman…and he had to do…something. 

Employ them? Kill them? Take them out for waffle fries and a large Sprite? 

Maybe he had to do one thing to one of them and another thing to the other.

Mouth pulling down into a frown, he got to his feet, the bodies of two men blurring before his eyes. As he swayed and caught the back of a chair to steady himself it occurred to him vaguely that he might not be in optimal health. 

***

“You’re staying here.”

“I thought you said we were going to R&D together?”

“No,” Five said, irritably shifting behind you again.

The closet was no less cramped after your fumblings in here. They were now sweatier, in fact, and sweat wasn’t the only bodily fluid making this an even more inconvenient hiding place than before. 

Impatiently, Five reiterated the plan:

“I blink in, steal a briefcase dynamo, blink back here and then we get out, okay?”

“And do what?” you protested, “We know nothing about what’s going on. We’ve got no idea how to stop whatever threat I pose.”

You heard air leave Five’s nostrils in a huff, but you continued to whisper over any planned interruption. 

“We need more information.”

Five wished he could lift his arm enough to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers and stave off the threatening headache as you continued:

“You said that guy - the Handler - had a file. Can’t we just-”

“No,” Five said, sternly. I need you to stay safe. So that means we get out of here as soon as possible.”

“But it’s not just about me!” you said, pained, “People could die.”

“And we’ll try to stop that from happening.” Five said, gentleness breaking through his frustration and he rubbed your hip in small, comforting circles.

“Remember: this isn’t your fault.”

And his forehead came into contact with the back of your head, the tip of his nose in your hair.

“I don’t want to lose you.” came the whisper, “You and I…I want to chase that as far as you’ll let me.”

“Five,” you protested, half exasperation, half touched. 

“You’ll be cold in that nightdress,” he said, wriggling to extract his arms from his suit jacket.

His tone was low and tender, but firm. He intended to carry his point, as much about your body temperature as your staying here.

He succeeded in removing his jacket with difficulty and, with no place to go, it stayed wedged between him and the tightly-packed supplies he was pressed up against. 

“Put this on when I’m gone.”

“No, Five-”  

But the suit jacket fell to the floor in the sudden absence of the body that had been pressing it against the boxes. 

***

You drew the jacket more closely around you as you followed Five’s figure through the gloom. The tunnel was tight, claustrophobic, and lit only by small, flickering fluorescents twenty feet apart. When you emerged into the relative spaciousness of the stairwell, you breathed a sigh of relief.

“What is this place?” 

“It’s a hollowed out cold war missile silo.” said Five, sounding partly amused and partly dismissive as your footsteps clanked on the metallic stairs, “It was Dad’s, and it’s a prepper’s paradise.”

At the bottom of the first flight of stairs, he felt his way along the curved wall until he found a switch, and the strip lighting flickered into life, along with the hum of machinery.

“There we go.” he said, looking around the room with satisfaction. “To think, all the time I was alone in the apocalypse there was all this just a four day walk from the city.”

He laughed bitterly, whether at his own ignorance or at his father’s keeping this knowledge from his children, you didn’t know.

You looked around with interest at the large, circular room you found yourself in. To the left of the stairwell, there was a bank of six floor-to-ceiling water tanks, and to the right there were large, industrial generators and batteries, presumably to produce and store electricity.

“We won’t need them now,” he said, noting your gaze and motioning you to follow him down the next flight of stairs, “They’re only designed to kick in if the mains go down.”

“Are we safe here?” you asked, following him down to the next level, where industrial shelves of canned and dried food stretched as far as you could see on either side. 

“Safe as we can be,” he said, turning sharply and continuing to trot lightly down another flight of stairs. “The first I heard of this place was six months ago. I found the deeds in a secret safe none of us knew about. Not even Klaus.”

You emerged at the end of a long hallway of modern, wood paneled walls leading to a circular central concourse, lit pleasantly with hidden bulbs mimicking sunlight with eerie accuracy.  

“Here we are.” he said, matter-of-factly, leading you through a door into a bright living space, “this floor sleeps sixteen and there are about ten identical units below us. Beneath that there’s a library, and then a gym and media center right at the bottom. Should keep us entertained for a few months at least.”

You looked with interest around the room. It was an odd mix of functional luxury. Plush yet hardy carpets, the smooth concrete finish on the walls and the sleek, modern furniture. It was very different from the Hargreeves house with its stuffed sofas, trinkets and elegant portraits around the walls. 

You looked assessingly at the ridiculously well-stocked bar along one wall. Five’s dad liked a drink as much as he did, apparently.

“I always assumed your place was full of booze because of you guys,” you said, smirking.

“Dad’s influence.” Five said, matter-of-factly. He adjusted his shirtsleeves unnecessarily before looking back at you, a small smile curling his lips.

“I’m going to take a shower after our little encounter in the closet. I’d say we have a few hours before my family get here, so…”

His eyebrows raised suggestively, and his head gave a small, inviting incline towards the hallway again. Clearly he was inviting you to join him in the shower.

You smirked, but hid your smile as you crossed over to the bar.

“Sounds nice, but I think I’m going to put my feet up and read this over a nice drink.”

Casually, you pulled the manilla file out from beneath Five’s jacket and waved it over your shoulder so he could see it.

There was a moment of disbelieving silence.

“What the hell?”

***

He was losing blood. He might not remember exactly why, but the fact was proclaimed by the thick, dark drops on the polished marble floor, smearing as he staggered through them.

The Handler encountered nobody as he swayed his way through the halls, intent on only one thing: if the answers to all this were going to be anywhere, they would be in his office. 

He thought the worst part of the journey would be navigating the stairwell, but it didn’t seem to have gotten any easier now that he was on the flat.

He ricocheted hard off one of the walls in the hallway, his head ringing with - not pain exactly - but with a surge of something that rooted his legs to the spot, causing him to nearly go sprawling with his own forward momentum.

As he flailed wildly, his hand closed around the nearest door handle, that of the cleaning supply closet, to support himself. He held it tightly, breathing shallowly with head against the solid wood of the doorframe.

***

Five looked from you to the file with a look that could only be described as apoplectic.

“I told you to stay in there!” he said, through teeth gritted so tightly you were surprised he could get it out. 

“The Handler walked in on me with half his brains falling out!” you said, defensively, “I had to think fast!”

In two strides, Five crossed the room, and grabbed you, his nails digging into your upper arms and giving you two or three abrupt shakes to punctuate his words:

“You could have been killed!”

***

You cowered when the door opened and a man fell through it. The light of the corridor stung your eyes, and it took them a couple of moments to adjust until you almost screamed aloud at the sight before you. The Handler was impossibly standing before you, straightening up and swaying as he did so, blood dripping from a bullet wound above his right eye.

“File,” he slurred. 

“Um,” you stuttered, trembling.

“There’s a man,” he continued, still in that dragging monotone and apparently incapable of noting your fear. “There’s something about a man. And a woman. In a file. My office.”

Neither of his eyes were focused on you. In fact, one of them was drifting off into the back of his head as a result of the traumatic brain injury.

You bit your lip. Though Five had insisted you stay here, this opportunity had just dropped into your lap. 

“Then we should go and get it,” you said. 

“Yesss,” he replied, as if he hadn’t thought of this, “Goooddiydea. Good idea. Yes. This way.”

He stood back against the door and ushered you with an odd sort of gallantry into the hallway. 

***

Five snatched the file from your hand 

“I can’t believe you did this! Are you an idiot?”

You fired up at this immediately. 

“I’m an idiot who got us information!” 

Five growled, baring his teeth in frustration, as if trying to stop himself striking like a snake. 

“I wanted you to stay safe!”

“I am safe!” you shouted, though placing your hands consolingly on his upper arms.

Your touch seemed to take some of the anger out of him, his face relaxing as you rubbed his arms soothingly up and down.

“He didn’t even recognise me. He took me into his office and fell down dead as soon as he stepped through the door. The file was just there on the desk. I took it, walked back to the closet and then you were back within two minutes.”

Five looked from you to the file and then back again.

“Did nobody see you?”

“Nobody walked past,” you shrugged, “and even if they saw us on cameras, we’re out of there now anyway.”

There was a moment or two of eye contact. Anger had not quite drained from those eyes, but now the fear underlying the anger was more evident, alongside a hard, manic energy building fast.

He broke away from you, sat down on the couch and began to read, his leg shaking restlessly. 

“Five,” you said, soothingly, following him and massaging his shoulders over the back of the couch, “I thought you needed to shower?”

“That was before we had this,” he murmured. “Now, shut up for a while. I’m reading.”

“Charming,” you said, and you thought you saw the hint of a smile curve his lips as he read. You stayed standing behind him, running your fingers absently though the hair at the nape of his neck. Gradually his leg stopped shaking as you petted him, leaning forward to read over his shoulder. He was looking intently at what looked like a flow chart.

“Nova Vertical City,” Five said contemplatively.

“That giant skyscraper they’re building?” you said, surprised, joining him on the couch now. 

“That’s the one,” he said, grimly, “It’s the wave of the future, apparently. Got a capacity of ten thousand and it looks like the construction crew are under a lot of pressure to get it finished.”

“What does this have to do with me?” you asked, scanning the page but unable to make sense of it from the little snippets you read.

“Nothing directly, but in about twenty days, you have a fender bender with the chief engineer, David Haltz. It means he gets to work late and kind of pissed off. As a result of that he’s stressed and rushing and he ignores a recommendation for structural analysis thinking it’s just normal settling movement. Except it isn’t. In two years or so it falls and six-thousand people die who aren’t supposed to.”

“Aren’t supposed to?”

“To ensure the optimal timeline. One of them is supposed to become president apparently. It looks like he’s responsible for killing way more than six-thousand people, but the math must bear out somewhere down the line.”

You sat there for a while, dumbfounded.

“So…people will die either way? More people will die because I live?”

Five sighed and put a hand on your knee.

“Don’t think about it like that. People always die, it’s just what people do. Trust me, don’t do the math. It’s all just chaos. We’re particles bouncing around in a bell jar colliding off one-another at random. We’ve got no choice. So don’t think about it. Take my advice and try to forget it if you can.”

Instinctively, you laid your head on Five’s shoulder, searching for the fundamental comfort his warmth could offer you after this news.

He looked at you sidelong. All these little touches. Grinding against each other in the closet had been hot, sure, but it had accelerated things. Through all the months Klaus tried to set you up, your relationship moved glacially. Then, after one heady cocktail of fear and lust, all the barriers between you had fallen before you’d had a chance to talk about what this was. 

He’d been anticipating a conversation after a few days, one in which he’d try to play it cool and sensible, but with your fingers in his hair and your cheek against his shoulder, it felt too right to ignore. 

He put an arm around you. 

“Why not just stop me getting into the fender bender?” you asked, eventually, “Why kill me when they could have just locked me up or whatever?”

Five shook his head.

“God knows. They kill because killing’s what they do when it comes to their targets. I expect resourcing costs play a part but the Commission I worked for liked to minimize outputs as much as possible.”

He spoke bitterly, brow lowered as he continued.

“If you kill problematic individuals then you only have to train assassins rather than jailors. You don’t have to house them and you don’t have to come up with ways to stay under the radar. The less common sense you have to apply, the easier it is to function in an institution like the Commission. It wasn’t like that when Herb was in charge.”

You could hear the cogs in his mind whirring once more after the brief hiatus in which he held you.

“This is actually good news,” he said, “It means we can wait it out. It’s probably safest to wait until construction of the vertical city’s complete before we leave, but in the meantime we can make a plan for the Commission. I gotta find out what happened to Herb and Dot.”

“Sounds good,” you said, rubbing his shoulder and hoping to settle him once more, but the tension in his body made it clear he was preparing himself for action.

“I’ll get started in advance of my family arriving.”

“In crusty underwear?”

Five ignored this and stood, fingers twitching into an automatic pen-hold as he scoured the room for a writing implement.

“This can wait,” you said, firmly.

“Doesn’t hurt to get ahead,” he said, distractedly.

You got to your feet and stood behind him, letting your arms wrap around his waist.

“Didn’t you promise me some more fun? Wait until tomorrow at least. Right now, you need to shower, put on some laundry, and change.”

You kissed his shoulder blades through his shirt, smelling sweat, sex and the undercurrent of detergent. The tension started to leave his body with each kiss, and you hummed against him as he relaxed into you, pleased with the effect you were having. 

“There we go,” you said, amused, “it can feel good to let go of control.”

He leaned back into your touch. This was rare for him to become intimate so soon. One of your hands slid from his hip to his stomach, where the last of his tension remained. You rubbed him gently there, and he sighed. 

“Did it feel good in the closet?” you whispered, gently into his ear, “trapped with my ass against you?”

Five could feel his body wanting to become boneless, your whisper lifting all the fine hairs on his neck. Too much had already happened today, the weight of responsibility was beginning to make itself felt again. It would feel good to turn off his brain. Something about your voice, about your arms holding him. It made him want to surrender.

“There are definitely worse situations to be in,” he said, voice slightly frayed.

You smirked. He was so easy to undo. A few more prods and this strong, usually so controlled man would be putty in your hands. You leaned in again, so that your lips brushed his ear as you whispered.

“No choice but to get hard, huh?” 

He chuckled under his breath, slightly nervously, you thought. You let the hand on his stomach drift lower, tantalizingly close to where he could already feel a semi developing against the uncomfortable mess in his pants.

“And didn’t it feel good to just let go and let it happen?” you whispered, brushing your lips against his neck.

Yes, you’d expected Five to be putty in your hands after a few more prods, but you didn’t expect him to crumble immediately. He let out an unrestrained moan after only one close-mouthed kiss against his throat. It was a whimper really, totally shameless. It made you flush with pride and arousal; how readily he gave himself up. 

“Tell me what to do,” he gasped, in a rush, the words falling over each other as they spilled out of his mouth. “Tell me what you want.”

You laughed in disbelief, still stroking his lower stomach in that perfect mix of soothing and teasing. Almost his full weight was against you, and his pelvis began to move, looking for more friction against his front and grinding his ass gently against you.

“You’re quite the slut, aren’t you?” you asked, conversationally.

He whimpered again, his hips stuttering, and the sound delighted you, although not as much as his next words.

“Yes! God yes, I’m a slut. I’ll do anything you want.”

You’d meant it as a joke, but Five Hargreeves was full of surprises. All the time you’d been hanging out with him and Klaus, you would never have suspected he was capable of mewling like a kitten, grinding his ass against you and falling over himself to admit he was a slut.

You kissed his neck again, and this time you grazed him with your teeth.

“Oh fuck,” he wispred, rapturously, his hair falling over his eyes, “bite me. Please.”

“So demanding.” you said, into his ear, “That’ll leave a mark. Your family will notice.”

“Don’t care,” he said, baring his neck to you, “don’t care who sees. Bite me.”

“You’re saying you want your family to know what I giant slut you are?”

He whined again, and in that moment the whine meant ‘Yes, and right now I’d let you tattoo it across my forehead’, but you knew that Five in his right mind would be less enthusiastic about the idea.

So you decided to be cruel to be kind.

“Teleport us to the shower and strip,” you said, simply.

“Bite me first,” he whined again, tearing at his buttons and baring his neck to your mouth so that the skin was taught against his muscles.

“Shower,” you said firmly, slapping him lightly on the ass.

He actually pouted at this. Five Hargreeves pouted. This man, who still had blood on his collar from fighting his way out of the Commission was pouting like a boy just denied his favorite candy. 

But, nevertheless, he obeyed, and in a flash of light and squeeze of pressure, you were standing in the bathroom, Five tearing off his clothes before you’d even got your bearings. By the time you’d managed to orientate yourself, he was already out of his shirt and in the process of dropping his pants.

You smirked at his eagerness, hanging his jacket on the back of the door and removing your night dress as he kicked his underwear across the room and turned on the shower, waiting with clear impatience for it to reach temperature. 

You looked at him as you removed your panties. He was toned and lithe, muscles gently defined rather than sculpted, and the steam just beginning to fill the room furled around their soft angles in a way that only served to accentuate their latent power. Suddenly, seeing him this way felt overwhelming: every inch of skin completely bared. So far you’d only seen and touched little slivers. 

His skin was pale, criss-crossed with scars and dotted here and there with freckles, moles or birthmarks - you weren’t sure which - like those on his face. Your eyes were caught by one in particular. It was a small mark on his upper thigh, just adjacent to his pubis. It was oddly dainty - beautiful, you might say - and it was made even more so by its proximity to his cock.

You hadn’t seen it in the closet, only felt it as it rubbed sinfully against you, trapped against his stomach within the confines of his clothes. It stood out firmly from his body, curved, thick, pretty and enough length to enjoy too. His glans was a deep pink full bell and. as you stared at it, your mouth filled with saliva as you imagined the shape and feel of it on your tongue. 

As he looked at you looking at him. He stroked his fingers gently across his tip, and his cock gave a tiny twitch. 

“Do you like what you see?” he asked, and there was none of the bravado that usually marked his speech. 

His voice was approval-seeking, and you could tell by the way his thighs inched closer together that there was a small edge of self-consciousness in being looked at this way.

“Fuck yes,” you breathed, his vulnerability finally forcing your gaze back to his face.

You didn’t need to say anything else. If your blown pupils weren’t enough, the way you kicked your panties away would have made him sure he had your approval.

You crossed the room in two strides, and almost before he had a chance to admire your naked body in turn, you were kissing him against the shower wall.

You held his face tenderly in your hands as you kissed his mouth, fingers bedding themselves in his wet hair. You kissed him hard and soft, teeth sometimes grazing his lips and tongue sometimes slipping between them. He wrapped his arms around you in turn, holding you to him as the water cascaded around you both.

For Five, the whole world was in your lips, in the heat of the water, your hands on his face, and the cold press of tiles against his back.

A rush of feeling passed between you, one redolent of all those games nights with Klaus: shared smiles, gentle flirting, a connection unspoken. Now it was all finally coming to its resolution: the most natural resolution of such a beginning. 

“Clean yourself,” you whispered, “Get yourself nice and clean for me.”

He nodded, swollen lips still tingling, and turned obediently to the shower, soaping his perfect body as you pressed yourself against his back once more, your naked breasts pressed against his scapula. He hummed happily at the contact, the sound morphing into a small moan as you kissed his neck once more. 

You alternated between cleaning yourself, kissing him, and rubbing your breasts against his back. Once clean, you leaned against him as he finished up, kissing softly from his ear lobe down, and he again bared his neck to you, yielding to your mouth immediately. 

“I like that,” he whispered, laying his head back against yours. 

You only smiled against his skin and continued. 

Each kiss melted him a little further, that floaty, boneless feeling starting to reassert itself. By the time you nipped him with your teeth, he’d already let out a few needy little hmmms, resisting the urge to toss his head with the ticklish, shivery feeling.

“Bite me,” he said again, feverishly “please, bite me.”

Drawing it out, you let your tongue drag along his lower neck to the area of soft skin between neck and shoulder that would be far less obvious beneath clothes. He let out an anguished whine at this tease, but then groaned as you sucked a deep purple hickey above his clavicle. 

“Fuck yes,” he whispered, arching his back into you as you nipped your teeth into the spot, marking him in just the way he wanted, in the way that made him yours. 

Both of your hands reached around him then, one to gently stroke and pinch the tip of his soap-slickened cock with your fingers, and the other to roll a nipple between thumb and forefinger.

He gave a shaky little gasp at this, and you smiled. 

“So sensitive,” you cooed, your mind aflame with a delightful consciousness of your power over him, “you’re so easy, Five.”

He only groaned, and, when your hand rolled his foreskin as far back as it would go, he leaned back with a sigh, laying his head on your shoulder in a display of acquiescence, happy to be held in your arms and pleasured. 

“So you wanna be a little pillow princess?” you smirked, kissing his cheekbone, letting him know that this was okay with you if so.

“I wanna be whatever you want me to be,” he said, voice slightly slurred with the intensity of his arousal as his dick leaked a little precome onto your thumb “just tell me what to do.”

“Hm…” you said, considering this intriguing proposition. And then, deciding: “Face me and kneel.”

He did so. You reached over him to angle the shower so that it would fall on his back rather than onto his head. When you resettled against the shower’s wall, he was already at your feet, hands demurely on the wet tiled floor and head tilted up to look at you. 

His lips were slightly open, wet hair plastered off his face. He looked up at you with such a look of unqualified supplication that you found an strange instinct rising within you: wanting equally to nurture and to devour him. His eyes, that sweet, intermediate green, looking into yours and begging for whatever you wanted to give him. He looked so perfect like this, his cock protruding from between his slightly-spread thighs, that you found yourself idly wondering if Five might look at you that way on the end of a cute little strap-on. Would a doomsday bunker have such a thing?

Preoccupied with these thoughts, you pushed your slick thumb over his bottom lip. He accepted it meekly into his mouth, not taking his eyes off yours as he did so, his tongue flicking against the pad of your thumb, cleaning it of his arousal with a fervor that made your pussy ache.

“How about you eat my cunt?”

“Yes please,” he said, moving forward eagerly as you draped a leg over his shoulder to make room for him between your thighs. “Just use my face to get off.”

You chuckled at this.

“You really are a slut.”

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” he said smirking up at you, a little of his usual self returning with the wry expression, “If there’s pussy on my face, I’m just a fucktoy.”

You smiled back at him. Something about this little glimpse of his usual sardonicism made his submission even hotter; it felt like more of a conquest to have a man like him kneeling before you, ready and willing for you to use him. You took a gentle handful of hair from his crown. 

“Wow,” you said, with mock-admiration, “If you’re just a fucktoy, then I’ll expect you to make me come before you get any more pleasure.”

He only nodded and grunted his assent to this, too turned on for words. He buried his face gladly between your legs, nose pressed into your pubis. 

He kissed your clit reverentially, eyes fluttering closed in bliss. Each of his outward breaths tickled across your folds. He knelt there, eating you like a postulant worshiping at the altar, wanting nothing more than to be found worthy to serve. 

His tongue slid between your lips, dragging a long line across your inner labia to your clitoris. You let out a high-pitched moan that mingled with his own deep grunt upon tasting you. His voice sent pleasant vibrations against you, and you had to lean more heavily against the shower wall to compensate for your weak knees.

You used your grip in his hair to guide him where you needed his fully extended tongue, canting your hips forward and riding his face so that he slid back and forth in between your lips. The feel of him, warm and wet against you, sent heat coiling into your lower stomach. He was more eager than skilled, but his willingness to be used was all you really needed.

“Good little fucktoy,” you gasped, fucking his face. He moaned again, making wet suckling noises as he hooded and unhooded your clit with his tongue. Your pussy gushed into his mouth, rewarding him for his efforts, and he lapped it up like cream. He seemed to forget your pleasure for a moment as his tongue entered your pussy, seeking out more come greedily, groaning again and again as he swallowed what you gave to him.

It was then you noticed that he was beating himself off: a hand between his thighs stroking his dripping cock. You grinned: it was the perfect piece of disobedience to take advantage of. 

Using your grip on his hair, you pulled him away from you and pulled his head back, forcing him to look up at you with a hand under his chin. He did so with hazy eyes, hand still around his cock and face slippery with your come.

“Why are you touching yourself, Five?” you said, sternly, though with enough irony that he might know that he didn’t have to play along. As hot as this was, you had only been following his lead up until now, there had been no discussion on boundaries.

“I’m sorry,” he said dropping his cock immediately and kissing meekly at your fingers.

“Do fucktoys get pleasure before I do?”

“No,” he said, ruefully, “I’m just here for you to use.”

“That’s right,” you said, cocking your head to the side, “And yet you played with your little pecker when you weren’t supposed to.”

“It’s not that little” he said, unable to resist breaking character for a moment.

“Just a figure of speech,” you said, with dignity, “There’s more than enough to get a boy like you into trouble. But stop trying to distract me: you've been a bad little fucktoy, haven’t you?”

You could see him wanting to smile at this, finding amusement in your perfect ‘I’m-not-mad-I’m-just-disappointed’ demeanor, but he schooled his face into a look of regretful supplication and nodded.

“Do you think you need to be punished?” you continued, twirling his hair around your fingers. 

“I should be,” he agreed, with wide eyes that would be innocent but for the just-veiled excitement at this idea.

“Well, I’m glad you’re so contrite.” you said, with a sage nod, “And how should a bad fucktoy like you be punished?”

He answered immediately and with such readiness that part of you wondered whether this hadn’t been his plan all along:

“I think you should pin me down and use me like a dildo. I don’t think I should be allowed to come until you tell me.”

“That sounds like a reasonable punishment,” you considered, “but I wonder whether a little slut like you might enjoy that too much?”

“That’s definitely a risk,” he said, regretfully, “but it would still teach me a lesson.”

“And what would it teach you?” you asked him. 

Still holding your eyes, he took one of your fingers at his chin into his mouth and gave it a submissive little suck before he replied:

“What I’m good for: that I’m just a dick that happens to be attached to a person. I’m just your fucktoy.”

You chuckled at his breathy voice, laced with a hint of self-conscious irony. You also didn’t fail to notice the way his erection twitched as the words tumbled out of his mouth.

“That needy cock won’t last.”

“It will,” he said, made suddenly desperate again by his little act of self-degradation, “I’ll make it last. I’ll be so good for you, I promise.”

And he took two of your fingers into his mouth this time, as if by fellating them prettily enough he could prove himself. And he did look good doing it.

You leaned over him, turned off the shower and indicated the bathroom floor.

“Lay down a towel and lie on it. Quickly.”

He didn’t even stand, he blinked and reappeared at the towel rail on his feet. Another blink, and he appeared supine on the towel, already laid out on the bathroom floor. 

“Woah,” you said, wondering how one could possibly teleport a towel into place, “you’re full of surprises.”

Five nodded, watching you as you left the shower and came to stand over him. His eyes were like saucers as you approached, taking in the water dripping off your breasts and your puffy, swollen pussy. His left hand was already inching towards his dick, laying thick and hard against his stomach.

“No touching yourself!” you barked, and his hand slapped immediately back onto the towel.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You’re just so pretty.”

“Not an excuse,” you said, authoritatively, kneeling with his hips between your knees, “I need a fucktoy to make me come, not a greedy little slut.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll be better,” he said, voice thick with lust at the sight of your pussy hovering mere inches above his cock.

You couldn’t resist it anymore: you reached between your legs, lined him up at your entrance and sank down onto his dick.

You groaned, Five whined, his back arching off the floor, hands coming to your knees in an effort to steady either you or himself, he didn’t know which. He only knew that the tight, wet heat of you was already forcing his hips mechanically upwards, instinctively seeking deeper penetration.  

“Oh God.” he wheezed, as you took his wrists and pinned them over his head with one hand, your bodyweight shifting on him as you did so, creating all kinds of new sensations on his dick, sending pleasure radiating all the way down it. His balls were already tight, ready to blow.

You stirred your hips languidly against him, grinding your walls around the cock stretching them. He felt thick, sublime in the way he filled you. You sensed his sensitivity in the tightness of his thighs and leaned over to whisper right in his ear, 

“Be a good little fucktoy now.”

He nodded, breathing in pathetic little whimpers through his nose.

And you began to ride him with his arms pinned, angling your body to chase your own pleasure, heedless of his.

“Fuck,” he whined, “Fuckfuck. God yes,” he let out a throaty groan as you found the perfect angle and sped your hips, “Use me. Just like that.”

“Noisy. Little. Fucktoy,” you grunted, riding his cock. 

You had him where you needed him: squeezed between your thighs and his pretty, plump cockhead generating perfect friction aginst your G-spot. It seemed like Five’s punishment might not last for long: tingles were already running up and down your arms and legs, and the approaching orgasm promised to be explosive. 

“Use me.” he whispered again, eyes glassy as he looked up into yours, voice fragile and restive, “Use me, baby. It’s all I’m good for.”

He looked so pathetic as he said it, mouth slack, face still slick with your juices and his entire upper body tensed with the effort of holding off the orgasm you knew he was already riding the edge of.

“Just a. Useless. Little. Fucktoy” he whispered, and then he whined again, long and keening.

“Don’t you dare!” you scolded, feeling him tense even more. He was teetering, holding off only by his overriding need to prove himself: to be a good for you. 

What other option did you have?

You came spectacularly around his cock, your tits hitting him in the face with the force of your thrusts. You bucked and thrashed with the pleasure, listening to him begin to sob beneath you as your cunt contracted around him, trying to milk his cock of the come he was desperate not to give until you gave him permission.

“Oh fu-uuck,” 

“Oh, Five!” 

He sobbed again at the sound of your voice, rubbing his head feverishly against the towel and writhing as if trying to escape (though it was obvious that escape was the last thing on his mind).  

But not even his wriggling could have helped him then: you rode him like the fucking rodeo, bucking furiously along with your orgasm. Every thrust brought a fresh wave of bone deep pleasure and a new groan of delight.

Five, sobbing and struggling beneath you, managed to grind out one word.

“Please.”

You looked down at him, face blotchy and front teeth cutting white crescents into his lower lip. You took pity on him. 

“You can come.”

His hips immediately sprung into action, matching you thrust for thrust, and he shouted with long-needed relief, coming perfectly on command. 

“OHHHHHH-god-YESSSSS”

He emptied himself into you, cock throbbing and trying to shoot come long after his load was spent. It was intense, almost too intense, and it wasn't long before your movements began to overstimulate him.

“Stop,” he gasped. 

You did, releasing his hands and leaning forwards so that your torsos were flat against each other. He was shaking slightly as he tried to catch his breath and you wrapped your arms around him.

“You okay baby?” you whispered.

He couldn’t respond, only whimpered and buried his nose in your neck.

“You did so well,” you soothed.

“Was I good?” came the tiny whisper. 

“So good.”

You kissed his hair and rolled the pair of you, letting him slip gently out of you as you did so. Now he was lying more on top of you than on the towel itself, head nestled on your chest. 

“That was…different.” he said, after a couple of minutes of you whispering affirmations and raking your hands through his hair. 

“New for me too,” you admitted, “did I do okay? Not too mean?”

“No,” he said, “you were amazing.”

“No,” you said, kissing the bridge of his nose, “you were.”

He snuggled against you, and you sensed his lethargy. Ahead of you were months and months together, maybe as an acknowledged couple, or maybe enjoying the thrill of sneaking around in front of his siblings. But, before all that, there was a warm bed and electrolyte-replenishing drink and snack in Five’s near future. Before you broke your hold to facilitate this, you gave him one last squeeze.

“For the record,” you said, “you’re good for much more than a fucktoy. You’re the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, you saved my life today, you make me laugh, and you’re an excellent mode of transportation.”

He began to chuckle against you.

“I’m the pretty much the Swiss army knife of sluts,” he mumbled.

Five Hargreeves Megalist HERE

Taglist: @nevbrooke-555, @fiannee, @abeeabee6969, @chalametabingbong, @lolawassad, @icantpickanamefromonefandom @thebearmage (comment to be added or removed)

NOTE: I take Five requests, I'm fairly versatile in what I write (fluff, smut, angst, psychological character study- I'll try it all) but I will consider them on a case by case basis. See megalist for request status and more.

[petermorwood]

Flying Officer B.P. “Squirrel” Nutkin of 266 Squadron RAF, seen here in a Hawker Hurricane Mk I flown by 266 during the Fall of France.

As the British Expeditionary Force were driven back by Guderian’s Blitzkrieg, 266 was badly mauled while keeping Luftwaffe bombers away from the Dunkirk beaches, losing enough Hurricanes that it re-equipped with the Supermarine Spifire Mk Ia just in time for the Battle of Britain.

Nutkin, resisting what was already becoming known as "Spitfire Snobbery", was one of the last 266 Squadron pilots to convert from his Hurricane. This snapshot, therefore, must have been taken at some time in mid-June 1940, between the end of Operation Dynamo on 4th June and the official start of the Battle of Britain on 10th July.

*****

It was during the BEF’s final withdrawal from Dunkirk that Flying Officer Nutkin, already with two kills to his credit, made ace in an afternoon and won his first DFC.

He was section leader of Red Section - comprising himself, Pilot Officer Tom E. Brock and Pilot Officer J.R.M.E. Fisher - providing top cover for the evacuation, when on 2nd June 1940 they found themselves up-sun from a raid directed against several of the “Little Ships” (civilian vessels with volunteer crews).

Red Section executed a perfect “bounce” that caught the enemy completely off guard, six Luftwaffe aircraft were shot down, and Nutkin personally accounted for two Junkers Ju.87-B Stuka dive-bombers as well as one Messerschmitt Bf.109-E4 from their escort.

(Representative images, not actual footage)

“Squirrel” Nutkin finished his RAF service in 1946 with the rank of Wing Commander. It’s widely believed he was promoted no higher after saying “Nuts!” to Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, even though this turned out not to have been an insult, merely a misheard comment about which bar snacks were running short in the Officers' Mess.

Regardless of explanation, Leigh-Mallory - always notoriously pompous about his own image and reputation - made a disparaging entry in Nutkin’s file and refused to amend it. His later death in an accident meant the unwarranted black mark was never deleted.

This didn't concern post-war fledgling new airline BEA (British European Airways), and Nutkin joined them directly he left the Air Force…

…going on to become one of their senior captains before transferring to Transatlantic service with BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation).

During a layover in New York he met and later married Cicely van Gopher of the New Hampshire van Gophers, and on retirement from flying made a fortune in forestry.

“Some people can’t see the wood for the trees, but for some reason I'm quite good at both.”

[pinturas-sgm-aviacion]

1940 05 Spitfires over Dunkirk - Mark Postlethwaite

Spitfires of RAF 609 Sqn engage Ju87 Stukas over the Dunkirk beaches during the latter stages of Operation Dynamo.

[captain-price-unofficially]

British troops crowd the deck of a Royal Navy destroyer (possibly HMS Gallant ), on arrival at Dover after sailing from Dunkirk, 31 May 1940.

[whencyclopedia]

Dunkirk Evacuation

The Dunkirk Evacuation of 26 May to 4 June 1940, known as Operation Dynamo, was the attempt to save the British Expeditionary Force in France from total defeat by an advancing German army. Nearly 1,000 naval and civilian craft of all kinds, aided by calm weather and RAF air support, managed to evacuate around 340,000 British, French, and Allied soldiers.

The evacuation led to soured Franco-Anglo relations as the French considered Dunkirk a betrayal, but the alternative was very likely the capture of the entire British Expeditionary Force on the Continent. France surrendered shortly after Dunkirk, but the withdrawal allowed Britain and its empire to harbour its resources and fight on alone in what would become an ever-expanding theatre of war.

Germany's Blitzkrieg

At the outbreak of the Second World War when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, France was relying almost entirely on a single defensive line to protect itself against invasion. These defences were the Maginot Line, a series of mightily impressive concrete structures, bunkers, and underground tunnels which ran along France's eastern frontiers. Manned by 400,000 soldiers, the defence system was named after the French minister of war André Maginot. The French imagined a German attack was most likely to come in two places: the Metz and Lauter regions. As it turned out, Germany attacked France through the Ardennes and Sedan on the Belgian border, circumventing most of the Maginot Line and overrunning the inadequate French defences around the River Meuse, inadequate because the French had considered the terrain in this forested area unsuitable for tanks. Later in the campaign, the Maginot Line was breached near Colmar and Saarbrücken.

To bolster the defences of France, Britain had sent across the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under the command of General John Vereker (better known by his later title Lord Gort, 1886-1946). Around 150,000 men, mostly infantry, had arrived in September 1939 to strengthen the Franco-Belgian border. The BEF included the British Advanced Air Striking Force of 12 RAF squadrons. The aircraft were mostly Hawker Hurricane fighters and a few light bombers, all given much to the regret of RAF commanders who would have preferred to have kept these planes for home defence. The superior Supermarine Spitfire fighters were kept safely in Britain until the very last stages of the battle in France. The BEF had no armoured divisions and so was very much a defensive force, rather than an offensive one. More infantry divisions arrived up to April 1940, so the BEF grew to almost 400,000 men, but 150,000 of these had little or no military training. As General Bernard Montgomery (1887-1976) noted, the BEF was "totally unfit to fight a first class war on the Continent" (Dear, 130). In this respect, both Britain and France were very much stuck in the defensive-thinking mode that had won them the First World War (1914-18). Their enemy was exactly the opposite and had planned meticulously for what it called Fall Gelb (Operation Yellow), the German offensive in the west.

Totally unprepared for a war of movement, the defensive-thinking French were overwhelmed in the middle weeks of May 1940 by the German Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") tactics of fast-moving tanks supported by specialist bombers and smartly followed by the infantry. German forces swept through the three neutral countries of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. The 9th Army punched through the Ardennes and raced in a giant curve through northeast France to reach the coast around Boulogne. The BEF and the northern French armies (7th and 1st) were cut off from the rest of the French forces to the south. Germany had achieved what it called the 'Sickle Slice' (Sichelschnitt). By 24 May, the French and British troops were isolated and with their backs to the English Channel, occupying territory from Dunkirk to Lille. Although there were sporadic counterpunches by the defenders, Gort had already concluded that the French army had collapsed as an operational force. Gort considered an attack on the Germans to the south, which he was ordered to make, would have achieved very little except the annihilation of his army. The BEF must be saved, and so he withdrew to the north.

Continue reading...

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

The Starline Cycle

Rereading IDW Sonic. I've noticed that every one of Doctor Starline's Big Plans have gone basically exactly the same. It's like he's following some kind of failguy checklist, which would look something like this:

Implicitly through all other steps: take for granted that everything's just going to be perfect and you'll totally succeed without a hitch on your first try forever, and that everyone will behave in exactly the way you want them to. Get surprised whenever this does not in fact happen, even though "people not behaving in exactly the way you want them to" is your entire villain-motivation.

Accomplish a bunch of prerequisites for your Big Plans on your own (getting all the Chaos Emeralds to give to Eggman, stealing DNA from Tails and getting Belle's data in order to create Surge and Kit, etc)

Gather allies by just sort of showing up out of nowhere and toadying up to them. (The toadying was actually sincere with Eggman, but.)

Work together with your allies to bring the Big Plans to fruition. Inadvertently and unknowingly, alienate everyone around you, because you have no understanding of people or how they work.

Get your ass kicked once your alienated allies decide that they no longer need you, because you tend to form alliances with other villains, and Sonic villains tend to have a fairly limited number of ways to deal with people they don't like. Important: you must not see this coming -- again, because you have no understanding of people or how they work. (As an aside, Starline has slept through character A saying "let's kill him now" and character B saying "better idea: let's wait until we've gotten what we want out of him, and then kill him", on two unrelated occasions with different sets of characters.)

Ponder the problems and things that went wrong in the previous steps, fail to see the forest for the trees, make one (1) incremental change to how you operate, and decide that you've Learned Your Lesson And Will Never Fail Again. Get started on a new Big Plan and return to step 1.

And he made a snide remark about what he called the Sonic Cycle. As if there wasn't a really obvious Starline Cycle there, to.

... Of course, with his Surge and Kit plan, he only got as far as step 5 before he freaking died. Still, I'm not convinced Starline is gone for good. I feel like the trauma-brain-ghost Surge got when she was wearing the Dynamo Cage had to have been foreshadowing something.

[sosoribro]

OKAY LETS SETTLE THIS: A SILLY YET VERY FUN QUESTION:

TUMBLR, IS HE A SEXYMAN?

ARCHETYPES UNDER THE CUT

Artsy: He's said to be a vandalist, his Flipdeck picture displaying him spray-painting onto a building, and it being stated that to conclude each heist, he spray-paints the walls with "word-bubbled quips"

Blank slate: In general, characters from his source material have rather little traits of their own, probably because their main purpose is to order food.

Duality: He has a much kinder and more ordinary alter-ego, going by the name of 'Moe'.

Criminal: He's stated to be a theif and a vandalist.

Intelligence: His Flipdeck states that he has "a range of hightech tools to aid him in his thievery", and it is only logical to assume that he knows how to operate them, and could have perhaps even made them himself.

Mysterious: It's stated that he "lurks around Tastyville in the dead of night".

Nonstandard Character Design: Most characters are only in costume for Halloween or other holidays. The Dynamoe, however, is consistently seen in this get-up.

Obscured Face: He can be seen with a mask over his eyes, with features resembling devil horns.

Perpetual Smile: Much like the majority of the other characters, the Dynamoe is mainly only seen smiling, and will only be seen otherwise if the player achieves a low score on his order. However, his smile in particular is more of a smirk, one that only he has been designed with.

Rival: His nemesis is Joy's alter-ego, Ninjoy. They are commonly shipped together and have been slightly implied to have some kind of romantic connection, however, this has never been confirmed as of yet.

Technically Antagonist: He has never played an antagonistic role in any of the games, however can be seen causing mischief in promotional images. His occupation is also listed as 'supervillain'.

Well-Dressed/Suitguy/Gloveguy: He wears a red, blue, yellow, and black suit, along with white gloves.

[fipindustries]

claw/spy x family spouse swap

Loid Forger/Mia Hurst: they catch on the truth about the other one in about 10 minutes, but neither will admit they know the truth to the other so they get stuck in this really stupid cold war chicken game of who blinks first. Loid wants to use Mia's connections to the criminal world to get intel, Mia wants to find out everything about Loid's org just for the sake of having more tools in her arsenal and be better prepared. they never stop flawlessly performing the perfect little couple routine. in some ways Mia is actually more relaxed because she knows how to handle someone like loid and doesnt have to deal with the uncertainty of wether he is really in love with her or not.

the sad truth is that loid cant help but actually start getting a bit of a crush on her when he sees how effective, efficient, smart and strong operator she is.

now i see Mia and Ripley as a package since she kidnapped her way before meeting carson. which means ripley and anya would be sisters. anya is terrified of Mia, specially because when she reads her mind things are a bit more confusing than they usually are, which is actually really frustrating for Mia. Loid finds out that ripley is kidnapped and so he has to make a choice, does he do the right thing and return her to natalie? but that might draw way too much unwanted attention to his marriage. he asks fiona to quietly make natalie dissapear. what fiona didnt count on was a certain journalist being there to record it all...

Yor Forger/Carson Hurst: carson finds out about yor's actual work, at first yor is like "oh no, i have to kill him now because he found out the truth, and he was so hot too! :(" but then carson is like "no, actually im super into this, in fact can i join your little group? sounds fun". at first yor is super hesitant that her leader would even go for it but after five minutes talking to the guy carson immediatly charms his way into the assasin group. they are now a super duper hot awesome kickass assasin duo. Carson somehow manages to even charm Yuri into liking him.

tyr can be a dynamo of a kid but yor has the stregth and stamina to keep up with him, teaches him how to channel his boundless energy into martial arts.

one day they are assigned a new objective. David Calvacanti. when they are out there together scouting the terrain, figuring out the best approach to infiltrate into his mansion and kill him they see a young teenage girl trying to escape...

[edaworks]

Wasteland Survival Guide: The Institute, Fusion Reactors, and M.I.T.'s Actual Basement

It's that time again. Periodically I make unreasonable longposts about Fallout-related topics (it's a good way to keep track of fic research). Today I'm tackling nuclear fusion, the Institute, and the real-world Massachusetts Institute of Technology's basement.

Yeah, Yeah, M.I.T. is the Institute, We've All Seen - Wait, What Do You Mean, "The Vault Laboratory?"

M.I.T. - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - is a highly exclusive research university with a well-deserved reputation for hosting brilliant minds.

It also got its serial numbers filed off in order to host the in-game Institute. Why? Probably because of all the very real research into robotics, artificial intelligence, and power armor (no really). And because M.I.T. is actually doing now what the Institute tries to do in-game with nuclear fusion.

And, of course, because of the vaults in the basement.

You know what? I'll just start at the top...Read on below.

I'll be focusing on fusion-related research in this post, and comparing in-game Institute work on fusion to what's actually happening over at M.I.T. (We'll get to the Media Laboratory and robotics and AI and the, uhm, power armor stuff in a separate post. Or three.)

all actual M.I.T. researchers/faculty/students and/or nuclear physicists have my sincere apologies, I don't know shit about shit but I'm doing my best

I Didn't Sign Up for a Physics Class, but Okay

Here's the thing about nuclear fusion generators - y'know...the ones powering nearly** the entirety of pre-war in-game America?

Including self-contained, miniaturized reactors (fusion cores, fusion cells, microfusion cells, Corvega engines, assaultron and robobrain power supplies, recharger weapons, G.E.C.K.s, etc.) and full-scale reactors (powering vaults, the Lucky 38, the Prydwen (and Rivet City before Maxson Happened), missile silos, etc.)...?

We don't have them yet.

Of course we have nuclear power generation, what are you talking about?

Yes - but nuclear power plants currently operating use fission reactors! Fusion reactors, though? Well...

For the pre-war in-game universe, even more than for us, that fuel-to-energy ratio would have been absurdly important. Companies rushed to implement fusion for damn near every possible use, but waited until the Resource Wars left them no other choice. "No more (viable) oil reserves? Well, shit. Fusion it is."

Because of this, by October 23, 2077, pre-war Western markets were still somewhat new to adopting miniaturized nuclear fusion reactors.

For instance, Chryslus' first fusion vehicles - intentionally reminiscent of the absolutely wild Ford Nucleon concept car dreamed up in 1957 - came to market in 2070, less than a decade before the nuclear exchange.

As for the other benefits of nuclear fusion...Atom knows the in-game universe could do with less radioactive contamination:

It is no wonder the Institute wants to get the reactor in their basement up, running, and running better than originally designed.

Real-life M.I.T. is no stranger to running fusion reactors - they've been at it since the late '60s - but as it turns out, they are currently also "building a better mousetrap," and if they succeed they will be achieving all the Institute would hope for in clean energy production - without the moral deficit.

If nuclear fusion is so great, why aren't we using this technology yet IRL?

Because - and I cannot stress this enough - we are attempting to levitate bits of the Sun inside a donut to make really hot things boil water* so steam will turn a fan attached to a dynamo to power light bulbs.

*(there are two other ways to generate power using this heat)

Naturally...this comes with some complications.

We know fusion reactors can be the most energy-efficient form of power generation - we just need better reactors. That's where M.I.T. comes in.

The biggest problem right now is efficiency:

TL;DR - as of April 2024, all fusion reactors as a matter of course still consume more power to run than they are able to produce (meaning they do not reach "breakeven"). Many cutting-edge reactors also require tritium (very rare) as well as deuterium (very common) fuel.

We did not even see a fusion reaction that reached "breakeven" for power production until December of 2022. That reaction occurred at the National Ignition Facility in California, and their results just passed peer review in February of this year (2024).

Several in-progress reactors aim to improve on this, including ITER (the combined work of dozens of nations) in France, and SPARC: the new reactor under development by Mass Fusion Commonwealth Fusion Systems and M.I.T.'s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

Another big problem with this technology is that it involves plasma.

Plasma, as a particular song reminds us, is what the Sun is made of and The Sun Is Hot. That means plasma carries some very real 'we're-losing-structural-integrity, the-warp-core-is-breaching' risks, and we must jump through all kinds of hoops to work with it.

Why are we shoving the Sun inside a donut, again?

The most well-funded, well-researched way of smashing atoms together involves plasma and magnetic confinement fusion.

This shit is beyond cool. It may also look very familiar:

In-game, the Institute is trying to get what appears to be a spherical tokamak reactor up and running.

Bethesda's choice of reactor was no coincidence: M.I.T. operated the Alcator C-Mod, a spherical tokamak, while Fallout 4 was under development - but that reactor could not achieve "breakeven" IRL, and per Shaun's in-game dialogue, the fictional Alcator C-Mod couldn't either. (Weird given the miniaturized fusion devices everywhere in-universe, but okay, Shaun.)

However, M.I.T. stopped operating that reactor in 2016, a year after Fallout 4's release. SPARC, their planned replacement reactor actually has the sort of power potential we see in-game - and they aim to bring fusion power to market in this decade.

M.I.T., right now, in real life, is doing exactly what you're asked to help the Institute do in-game: build a fusion reactor that surpasses "breakeven."

What the hell is a tokamak and why does it look like half of a Star Trek warp core?

Your typical tokamak reactor is a great big donut-shaped vacuum chamber (the torus), traditionally surrounded by AT LEAST three sets of electromagnets (sometimes many more). M.I.T.'s design for the new SPARC reactor is a bit different, but let's start with the basics.

Why so many magnets?

Because plasma, being Literal Sun Matter, cannot come into contact with the torus containment walls or it will instantly burn through. (This happened in France in 1975. Following initial "well, fuck"s and a couple years' repairs, the logical next step was to publish a paper about it.)

The magnetic fields work to heat the plasma and provide current drive (keep electrons moving in a consistent direction through the plasma and around the torus), while also keeping it from touching anything, preventing a "warp core breach." I'll take a stab at explaining it but the Department of Energy probably does it better.

Meet the magnets:

Toroidal field magnets (blue, above): These enormous D-shaped magnets wrap around and through the torus, conducting an electrical current. This creates a magnetic field that keeps plasma from drifting horizontally into the containment walls.

Central solenoid (green, above): Inside the "donut hole" sits a massive, stacked electromagnet that generates enough electromagnetic force to launch two space shuttles at once. This heats the fuel to about one hundred million degrees Celsius so that it reaches plasma state, and helps "drive" the plasma current around the torus. (Radiofrequency or neutral beam injection heating/drive may be used as well for reactor prototypes aiming for power generation, because current drive from just the solenoid isn’t practical for continuous operation.) The central solenoid also creates another magnetic field called the "poloidal field," which "loops" around the plasma like a collar to prevent it from drifting vertically into the walls. The strongest central solenoid in existence was made for the ITER reactor...by General Atomics.

Outer poloidal field magnets (grey, above): A third set of electromagnets "stacks" up the outside of the torus, and helps maintain and adjust the poloidal field.

Together these three sets of magnets force the plasma to "float" inside the torus, shape it, and provide current drive. The stronger the magnetic field, the higher the reactor's power output.

Okay, and then what?

Given sufficient heat and drive/stability, the plasma fuel mixture undergoes fusion.

Neutrons released during fusion have plenty of kinetic energy (the kind of energy a kickball has midair before it hits you in the face), but no electric charge.

Since magnetic fields only affect negatively or positively charged particles, neutrons completely ignore the fields, sailing straight through and slamming into a "blanket" of metal coating the donut's insides. Neutrons passing into the 'blanket" lose their kinetic energy, which is converted to heat and absorbed by the "blanket." (ITER's "blanket" involves a lot of beryllium, which...behaves a bit differently IRL than it does in-game.)

Heat captured by the "blanket" is then used to generate power. For instance, a water cooling system can bleed heat from the "blanket," regulating temperature and creating superheated highly-pressurized steam to run turbine generators.

I notice you described a "typical" tokamak above -what's the atypical option?

Check out SPARC.

Its huge design departure is that it uses new high-temperature superconducing magnets (most existing types have to be cooled to vacuum-of-space temperatures using something like a liquid helium system to achieve superconductivity, which is a huge power drain) to create a monstrous magnetic field - and its size is tiny in comparison to its projected power output.

Neat. So why did you refer to plasma as a problem?

Well...between the heat and the neutrons, the "blanket," the "first wall" and all plasma-facing surfaces inside the torus take one hell of a beating:

"Neutron degradation of wall surfaces-" "Energy is released in the form of the kinetic energy of the reaction products-" In practical terms, that just means countless neutrons are doing THIS:

...but to the containment wall and other surfaces inside the torus, instead of to Batshuayi's face. And so:

Basically, this stuff breaks fast enough - and the only materials that don't break quickly are rare enough - to create a real barrier to commercial use.

And THIS is one of the problems they're working on solving in M.I.T.'s basement.

Now we can talk about the Vault. FINALLY.

M.I.T. is home to the Center for Science and Technology with Accelerators and Radiation (CSTAR). CSTAR's splash page announces:

Linear plasma devices? You mean like -

No, not like plasma rifles. Instead of weapons, we're talking about tools being used to solve the "plasma fucking destroys everything it touches" problem.

How does CSTAR do this? They've got CLASS. ...No, really:

This field is called plasma-surface interaction science, and if you want a really long but very informative read on how CSTAR's work helps move it forward, check this out. It involves the DIONISOS Linear Plasma Device - a "let's shoot it with plasma and see what happens" tool.

CSTAR also works to better undertstand how materials handle radiation damage, and how they behave after becoming irradiated.

And to handle this sort of work, one needs a...

The Vault Laboratory for Nuclear Science "combines high-intensity particle sources, precision particle detection, and a heavily shielded experimental area to create a facility for nuclear research in high-radiation environments." It contains, among other things:

the DT Neutron Generator, which is used in a variety of experiments, including radiation detector development (pretty damned important) and characterization, fast neutron imaging, and material activation (stuff becoming radioactive).

the DANTE Tandem Accelerator, which was "originally designed to produce high neutron yields for use in cancer therapy research."

And that is what's actually going on in M.I.T.'s basement: truth is cooler than fiction.

The takeaways:

Yes, M.I.T. really is building a revolutionary fusion reactor with parts from Mass Fusion Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

Yes, there really is a secure underground facility where incredibly advanced research related to nuclear fusion, radiation detection, irradiated materials, and degradation of materials due to radiation exposure takes place.

Yes, I really would spend eight hours researching nuclear physics instead of doing more dishes. Shoutout to @twosides--samecoin for tolerating my absurd hyperfocus on researching this.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk on what M.I.T. is really doing in its basement.

Tune in next time for M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory, and how it is related to real-world power armor, plus: the relationship between Langley, P.A.M.'s IRL cousin, and Vault 101.

** (Fallout is wildly inconsistent re: how widespread fusion is in-game and when it was developed. I mean we're talking a two-decade spread of inconsistency! And somehow the technology - first available to the military - was then miniaturized and made available to the general public before becoming widespread for commercial power generation? And somehow we both do and don't have impossible cold fusion in game? It's a mess. I reject this reality and replace it with a fish, hence this post. Also, I hate fission batteries. don't talk to me about fission batteries, "fission batteries" are small fission reactors but they are definitely not "battery sized" - the "fission batteries" in-universe are so miniaturized that they are more likely another kind of atomic battery like a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and those are subject to a law of diminishing returns as the fuel decays/not producing a reasonably useful power output after over 200 years due to the isotopes normally used/can be VERY dangerous if the shielding is breached or removed, and - you know what, that's also a whole different post.)

[dontforgetukraine]

Oleksandr Demenko joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in his second year at the Faculty of Management at the Zaporizhzhia Institute of Economics and Information Technologies. From 2019 to 2021, he served in the Air Force. In 2021, he signed a contract and joined the 9th Operational Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine (later to become the 15th Brigade of the Kara-Dag Offensive Guard). During the defence of Mariupol, Oleksandr was injured and spent more than a year and a half in Russian captivity – from May 17, 2022, to January 31, 2024.

Life in captivity

Interview conducted by Kostyantyn Grechany K.G.: How were you treated in captivity?  O.D.: We were held by the Russians, who called themselves “DPR” (Donetsk People’s Republic). Basically, they fed us, but the attitude was, how can I tell you… There was moral pressure, and physical pressure, regular interrogations, beatings. International humanitarian organisations were not allowed to visit us.   The beatings were so-called “regular”, i.e. for non-compliance with the rules of detention. Someone fell asleep at the wrong time, someone did something in the house contrary to their routine – they regularly beat them for that. We were also beaten for not knowing the anthem of the Russian Federation, for not learning Soviet poems and songs that they forced us to learn (we were always walking around in the organised pattern listening to Soviet songs). Of course, there were beatings during interrogations.  There was also an operational department where prisoners were selectively taken in order to tell them who did not follow their “rules of detention”. They asked them to inform on each other. K.G.: Were representatives of the “KGB of the DPR” present during these conversations? O.D.: No, there were only colony employees there. Actually, it went on like that until January 23, 2024, when we were transferred to Taganrog [a city of regional subordination in the Russian Federation – ed]. There we were beaten several times a day. There, the treatment was worse than brutal. The food was terrible, and very little food was given, the conditions were terrible. All the clothes were ragged, there was no heating (and I need to remind you, it was January), no hygiene, no medical care. While in Horlivka, we could somehow adapt and survive, but in Taganrog, it was a complete nightmare. K.G.: How long did you stay in Taganrog? O.D.: I stayed in Taganrog for a week, during which I learned all the nuances of being in Russian captivity. When we arrived, we were beaten so badly that we couldn’t even walk or sit. I can’t even imagine what it was like for the guys who spent all their time in captivity there. They told me such things as torture with a stun gun and a tapik. It’s a device like a dynamo from a field phone with a high current. You are connected to it and turned around so that a current passes through your body. It’s worse than a stun gun.   

Source: Mariupol defender: surviving in captivity for over 1.5 years