#cylinder tracking system

[trakaid4u]

Improve Safety with Smart Cylinder Monitoring

Cylinder tracking isn’t just about logistics—it’s about safety. Trakaid offers a cutting-edge tracking system that ensures each cylinder is accounted for, tested, and safely handled throughout its lifecycle.

The system uses RFID tagging and a cloud database to track each cylinder’s location, fill status, and testing history in real time. It eliminates manual logbooks, improves process accuracy, and ensures compliance with regulatory standards.

Whether you’re managing thousands of cylinders for hospitals or industrial clients, Trakaid gives you the power to track, recall, and report instantly. It helps reduce accidents, control inventory, and maintain safety audits effortlessly.

The result? Fewer losses, better service, and complete peace of mind.

🛠️ Make your gas operations safer—explore Trakaid’s solution at www.trakaid.com

[rupasriymts]

Petrosoft Gas Station Management Software

Running a gas agency can be hard when you have to handle many tasks every day. Petrosoft helps make this easy with simple gas station management software. With Petrosoft, you can keep track of all your gas cylinders, customer orders, and deliveries in one place. You do not need to write everything down on paper. The software does the work for you and keeps all records safe.

Petrosoft helps you know how many gas cylinders you have in stock. You can see when stock is low and order more on time. This way, you will never disappoint your customers. The software also helps you see which customer has booked a cylinder, which ones are delivered, and which ones are pending. This saves your time and keeps your work smooth.

Billing is also very easy with Petrosoft. You can create bills fast and share them with your customers without any mistakes. Customers can pay easily, and you can track all payments in the software. It shows you daily and monthly reports, so you always know how your business is running.

Petrosoft also helps you manage your delivery staff. You can check who is delivering cylinders, where they are, and how many cylinders they deliver in a day. This makes sure your customers get their cylinders on time.

[ettinjiggywithit]

Hey folks! I'm crowdfunding a reprint of Hard Wired Island, my cyberpunk TTRPG. Backers can get a discounted physical copy or just a PDF!

Hard Wired Island is a retrofuture cyberpunk game, inspired by 90s anime. It's set on a space station orbiting Earth in an alternate 2020 where a meteorite strike supercharged public interest in space exploration. The player characters are regular Grand Cross citizens doing their best to live their everyday lives while fighting for the station's future.

This 400-page game includes:

An easy-to-learn system where social actions and problem-solving skills are at least as important as hacking and getting into fights.

An alternate 2020 setting in an O'Neill cylinder near Earth.

Descriptions of the many locations of Grand Cross, from the busy downtown Voyager Ward to the high-tech parkland of Mariposa to the Agriculture Ring that feeds the station.

Seven Occupations, including the Fixer, the Hacker, and the Influencer, along with a plethora of character options.

Over 100 detailed NPC descriptions, from corporate heavyweights to android crime lords to just regular citizens of an Earth-orbit city.

A flexible mission prep system that allows characters to adapt their plans on the fly without wasting their earlier efforts.

A wealth system that tracks the financial burdens placed on you by the capitalist system you live in.

A cybernetics system that doesn't dehumanize you for installing augments.

A lot of great art from a lot of great artists.

No genAI because we're not gormless hacks.

The game released in 2021 to great reviews. We sold out of print copies long ago and people keep asking us for more, so now's your chance!

[whirligig-girl]

NWR No.1 and SLYM No.11513 at a dual gauge interchange just outside of the city center.

SLYM No.11513 is an Advanced Steam Locomotive native to Gymnome--a coal-burning steam engine operating at high pressure, with technological improvements to allow it to rival the efficiency and ease of use of a diesel locomotive, such as electronic controls, compound expansion of steam, a gas producer combustion system firebox, dual exhaust, and automatic firing and oiling. 11513 was built some time in the 2340s, and survives to 2381 as a museum piece.

NWR No.1 is a much older locomotive and from another planet altogether, built 1915 for the LBSC railway as a one-off prototype for a six-coupled shunter to replace the aging Terriers and to supplement the much larger E2-tanks. NWR No.1 made it to the North Western Railway not long after it was built, having been allocated there for the war effort. It is not clear how a locomotive built 465 years in the past on planet Earth made it intact to Gymnome, nor how its gauge perfectly matched Goo'iw Broad Gauge, at least not without invoking some kind of universe-spanning magic railroad, or perhaps the notion that this is all a simulation being run in some kind of virtual reality in some alien starship.

(no this isn't canon.)

Artist's notes:

Earlier today I doodled this in my sketchbook.

And when I got home i decided, hey, I have my Thomas 3D model, and I have the game model of the Advanced Steam Tank Engine... why not actually stage them together and draw them to-scale. The size difference is greater than I expected--partly I think this is because the Thomas gauge-1 prop was not designed with scale in mind, so it's bigger than British Railways loading gauge. Granted, they are at different gauges (standard gauge versus roughly meter-ish gauge), but the loading gauge on the advanced steam engine is very wide.

My first attempt at the drawing was from a very different angle:

But I quickly realized that you can't actually see the Advanced Steam Engine's wheels, and that's a major design aspect.

So i chose a different angle.

I constructed the dual gauge track before anything else.

And before long (the better part of 2 hours) I had the line art finished.

The Advanced Steam Engine ended up being a hybrid between the original illustration I did of it months ago, and the game model--with most of the geometry accurate to the game model, but with the subtler detailing of the illustrated version.

Thomas was meant to be a sort of hybrid of the Gauge 1 Prop from the TV series and a realistic loco. I prioritized the geometry and simplicity of the gauge 1 prop in most respects, but added details below the running board, in particular brake rigging, sanding gear, and these blade-like protrusions of the frames which i'm pretty sure are some kind of debris deflector, a british version of a cowcatcher. There's also snifters on the cylinder saddle, and the whistle is made of two different lengths to justify Thomas' multi-tone whistle.

The original background was going to be this marshland with (electricity-generating) windmills in the background, a callback to that first shot in the Thomas & Friends opening credits, but I hated how it felt like the middle of nowhere, so I introduced the retaining wall and an alien city scene.

British steam engines are generally given very shiny liveries which reflect the environment in interesting ways, so I made sure to do that justice, using a GWR 14xx autotank as reference.

By contrast, the Advanced Steam Tank Engine is kept in a more workwormlike condition, with a somewhat faded matte paint work and a fair amount of grime.

The original illustration of the advanced steam engine, for comparison.

Finally, a version with faces.

[railfangxy]

The Embodiment of Streamline Moderne

Most steam streamliners have shrouds to bring the engine into a Moderne style. Be that styling the engine to look as new as its consist does on the inside, OR embracing a look that borrows from contemporary diesel power.

Seems the Pennsylvania Railroad T1's were the exact opposite, at least at first. A futuristic design concept by Raymond Loewy was adapted to fit the outline of a steam engine

Just look between these two and the resemblance is clear

The T1's are already fairly modern machines as far as steam locomotives go. True, they are reciprocating machines so they still use cylinders and rods compared to individual steam motors, or a steam turbine drive. However, there's two or three aspects about them to complement their forward styling.

First is the duplex drive. The concept was to create a locomotive that was easier on the track at higher speeds by splitting up the driving wheels. More cylinders are needed, but the actual reciprocating mass is reduced. The T1's weren't the first iterations of this, on or off their home railroad, but they came with something else.

Second is poppet valves; more familiar with stationary steam engines, and persist today in internal combustion engines. Compared to piston valves, poppets allow for more precise timing of admission and exhaust to the cylinder, thus more power can be obtained. Poppet valves were tried a few times in the US in the 20s, and saw use elsewhere, but almost nothing like what the T1's had

Lastly is the Franklin System of Steam Distribution. This is a form of valve gear, large based on Lentz gear as it uses oscillation cams and has valves positions more like a piston. However, there's multiple sets of these valves, and the actual reciporicating mass is miniaturized and housed in a gearbox casing. In addition to the slight power boost offered by poppet valves, this further reduction of weight means the engine puts less energy into moving itself compared to its train. In addition, this protected the motion and meant maintenance requirements were actually lower compared to conventional valve gear.

If you know anything about the T1 that last part may sound odd, but the first engine to use the Franklin system did indeed require less maintenance than others in its division. The streamlining made access tricky, but it was really a problem when it came to making repairs not general maintenance.

All this and more set the T1 apart from anything that came before, or really since. It's only fitting they look the part of being a vision of the future. Just had no idea where the styling originated for them to look so much more modern on the outside, when they were already steps forward on the inside.

The best part about the iconic profile is that it never really left. I don't just mean the later T1's or the similar looking diesels. The prototype T1's kept the Loewy influence up front right til the end. Just iconic

[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.

taglist🥂 @9thmystery @defronix @lailac13 @the-ultimate-librarian @ihatepaperwork if you want to be part of it here

[post-apocalyptic-fantasy-au]

3

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(Prefacing this with a bit of a content warning: it gets a bit dark. This is a bit of an insight into Tango's life at the lab, and the sorts of experiments they did when he was younger, but Cub and Doc are big softies and try to take care of him through it all. Proceed at your own discretion.)

In the dream, he was a kid again, back in the lab, scientists of all descriptions surrounding him. His limbs were strapped down, just in case, and there were about six syringes filled with various anesthetics, just in case, but this was going to be quick and easy and painless, nothing would go wrong, they promised.

Cub was finishing setting up what felt like dozens of machines hooked up to Tango, monitoring his vitals, his brain activity, any shift in his eyes, every twitch in his body. Anything that had even the slightest chance of changing, Cub wanted to track it.

Cub looked different in the dream. Much, much younger, and much, much more human. In fact, the only suggestion that he wasn't fully human was the row of sharp teeth behind his lips, and Tango could only spot them occasionally, and even then only because he knew they were there.

Even though this had nothing to do with him, Doc was standing against a wall, watching the proceedings with cool curiosity. Tango had asked him if he didn't have anywhere else to be, hating the amount of eyes already fixed on him, and Doc had merely shrugged and declared they'd "survive without me".

Doc looked different too, though less notably. His prosthetics were clunkier, with less fancy bells and whistles, and he didn't yet need a hat to hide his horns, only his fluffy hair.

"We'll start small," Cub said, finally finishing up and moving to stand beside Tango's head. He held a pipette in his hand, filled with water. "Just a few drops. Then we'll go from there."

Tango braced himself. He wanted to close his eyes, but that would make nullify an entire system that Cub so carefully set up. Instead, he curled his hands into fists and clenched his jaw. He couldn't hide his racing heart, not with the constant beep-beep-beep betraying his nerves, so he didn't bother trying.

"Three. Two. One." Cub squeezed the pipette, letting a single drop fall from the end onto Tango's head.

His flames boiled the drop before it even touched him, sending it flying upwards in a tiny cloud of steam.

Pens scribbled on paper all around.

Cub had realised very early that Tango didn't have nearly as much water in him as a human, and had been building up to testing him with it ever since. Now, Tango was barely sixteen, a teenager, a kid even by human standards. By dragon standards, he was still practically a hatchling (although, with a human mother, he hadn't actually hatched out of anything, so he was unsure about the terminology there). He was trying his best to calm his fear, but so young, it was nearly impossible. All he could do was brace himself and wait.

"Increasing volume," Cub said, putting down the pipette and pulling out a measuring cylinder instead. "Ten milliliters. Three. Two. One."

Again, much of the water evaporated in time, but a few drops landed on Tango's head. Sizzling filled the room as Tango sucked in a breath. It didn't hurt... much. It was like a bug bite. In just a second, the pain was over, the last of the water boiling away and the flames that had been put out rushing back to life.

More writing.

"Does it hurt?" Cub asked.

"No." It didn't, not anymore. It had, for a second, but it was fine now.

"Ready to move on?"

Tango nodded. "Yes."

He could handle the small pain. It wasn't much, nowhere near the worst pain he'd already experienced in his short lifetime. He could handle it.

"Increasing volume." Cub retrieved another measuring cylinder. "Twenty-five milliliters. Three. Two. One."

The water was poured. Most of it landed on his head this time. He gasped. This pain was a little more than before, closer to a wasp sting. It took a lot longer for the water to go away so his flames could return, leaving his scalp exposed for longer and making the pain last longer. Before long, though, the pain faded and he was fine again.

"Tango?" It took him a second to register Cub was speaking. He looked up at the scientist.

"I'm okay," Tango insisted. "Keep going."

"Do you need a second?"

"No. I'm fine."

"Alright." Cub sounded doubtful, and Tango heard Doc's scoff from the other side of the room, but they pushed on as requested. "Increasing volume. Fifty milliliters. Three. Two. One."

Like before, the pain was exponentially worse. Tango just barely managed to turn his yelp into a groan. He knew how important this research was, not only to Cub, but to Tango himself, as well. He needed to know how much water was too much. This certainly was not too much. He could handle it.

Of course, none of these thoughts were coherent in the moment, presenting themselves more as concepts than tangible thoughts. The pain was far too bad for Tango to produce anything even halfway intelligible.

When the dimness in Tango's vision finally faded, he met Cub's gaze and nodded. He was fine.

"Increasing volume. One hundred milliliters." Cub sounded rushed now, like he wanted to get it over with. Though he'd never admit it, Tango was grateful. "Three. Two. One."

Tango did shout that time, a combination of nonsense syllables that felt less pathetic than an actual scream but still gave him an outlet for the pain. It was awful. This was what he imagined burning felt like, though it was in fact exactly the opposite. When Tango's flames were put out, he felt the same thing other people would feel if they were lit on fire. His vision blacked out entirely, all his senses but the ability to feel abandoning him, leaving him consumed by the pain with nothing to distract him. He panted, waiting for the pain to pass, waiting for the world to return.

It felt like hours ran past him before he could see Cub's round, concerned face hovering over him. It immediately flooded with relief.

"Thought we lost you there for a second, man," Cub told him.

Tango tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat. He swallowed and tried again. "I- I'm fine."

"That's enough," Doc said.

Tango turned his head as much as he could manage to find the male no longer standing against the wall looking barely interested. Now, he was just beyond the wall of machines and scientist, both hands curled into fists, bionic eye flashing slightly, like it did when one of his contraptions blew up.

"No," Tango grit out. "No, I'm fine."

"Tango-"

"I'm fine."

Doc and Cub shared a look. It wasn't a look Tango was familiar with, but he would very quickly come to recognise it as the "Tango's being a stubborn idiot" look.

"One more," Cub conceded uncertainly.

"Finish it." Tango wasn't planning to say it. He didn't want it - void, he really didn't want it - but it was important data, and he'd be damned if he had to go through all this again to get it later.

Cub signaled to one of the interns holding a syringe of anesthetic, but Tango pulled his arm away.

"No! No, that defeats the purpose! You need organic data. That'll mess it up."

"Tango, there is no way we're doing this with you in this state," Cub protested.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." That was Doc. "You are not fine, Tango. Cub is right."

Tango scowled between the two of them. "If we're going to do this, we may as well do it properly."

That was when he noticed what Cub was holding. It looked like a small glass bucket, filled with water. He braced himself and, before either Cub or Doc could protest again, leant forwards as far as he could with his limbs strapped to the chair he was sitting in with as much force and speed as he could muster. He didn't reach Cub and he bucket, didn't even come close, but he managed to startle Cub so much that the bucket was dropped anyway.

The pain was worse than anything else he'd ever experienced. It completely took everything over, taking away even his self control. He screamed properly this time, but he couldn't hear it. He thrashed in the bonds, but he couldn't feel it. The machines around him were going haywire, but he couldn't see them. It was everything, everywhere, and it wasn't stopping, it wasn't stopping, he just wanted it to stop, someone MAKE IT STOP!

It was agony, pure agony, that flooded his veins and tore his nerves to shreds, so bad that he felt like it was killing him. Some part of him, far larger than he would ever, ever admit, wished it would hurry up and kill him faster, just so the pain would stop, stop, stop, stop!

And then he woke up.

But the pain went on. He screamed and thrashed, and his limbs weren't being held down by thick metal rings, and there weren't innumerable wires poking out of him. There were people around him, and not a scientist among them.

And still the pain persisted, never stopping, never resting, never giving him a moment to breathe. The part of him that could still think thought he might have been begging, but he wasn't sure.

Still, the pain refused to calm. He vaguely registered the back of his hand hitting something - someone - but it was secondary, tertiary even, to the pain, the pain, the awful overarching pain.

And the pain just kept on slicing through his bod-

It dimmed.

Heat was brushing his scalp. He couldn't hold back a moan of relief, leaning back into it, as, little by little, the warmth chased away the pain. It wasn't until it passed from "unbearable" to "not quite tolerable" that he was able to recognise what was causing it: Torchy, puffing every bit of fire in his tiny body at Tango's head.

Far too many minutes later, the pain was gone entirely. Slowly, as part of his head dried off, the fire returned to life in those spots, eliminating the pain entirely, until finally his whole head was ablaze again. Tango sighed, his entire body sagging into the floor he was lying on.

He raised a shaking hand over his head, found Torchy curled up among the flames, completely spent, and lay his hand onto the dragon's scales.

A voice said, "Okay, so not that. Any other ideas?"

Unconsciousness once again claimed his exhausted body.

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[nabazakk75]

**The BAC Mono: A Singular Experience in Automotive Performance**

In a world dominated by multi-seat sports cars and luxury performance vehicles, the **BAC Mono** stands as an anomaly. With its singular, monocoque design and an almost obsessive focus on the driving experience, this British-made hypercar offers enthusiasts something entirely different—a car built for pure driving pleasure. The BAC Mono isn’t just a car; it’s a reminder of the connection between man, machine, and road.

### **A Brief Introduction to the BAC Mono**

Manufactured by **Briggs Automotive Company (BAC)**, the Mono is a single-seater, track-inspired sports car that blurs the lines between street-legal car and racing machine. Introduced in 2011, the BAC Mono has quickly gained a cult following among driving purists who appreciate its minimalistic design, extreme performance, and exhilarating driving dynamics. This car isn’t meant for daily commuting or family trips—it's built for those who crave an unfiltered, high-performance driving experience.

### **Performance That Rivals the Best**

At the heart of the BAC Mono is a **2.5-liter four-cylinder engine** that produces 305 horsepower. On paper, this might not sound like a massive number when compared to other supercars, but thanks to its incredibly lightweight construction (weighing just 540 kg or 1,190 pounds), the Mono has a power-to-weight ratio that rivals the most exotic cars on the planet.

The engine is paired with a **6-speed sequential gearbox** that allows for lightning-fast gear changes, contributing to the car's superb track performance. The Mono's 0-60 mph (0-100 km/h) time is a blistering **2.8 seconds**, while it can reach a top speed of 170 mph (274 km/h). These numbers, coupled with a fully independent suspension system and lightweight carbon-fiber bodywork, result in a vehicle that is agile, responsive, and remarkably stable at high speeds.

### **Design Focused on the Driver**

The **BAC Mono** is fundamentally designed around the idea of the "driver's car." The cabin is minimalist but functional, with a single racing seat at the center, surrounded by a digital dashboard and a steering wheel that places all critical information and controls at the driver’s fingertips. The design makes it clear that this car is all about the person behind the wheel.

With its fully enclosed cockpit, a low stance, and an open-wheel layout, the Mono feels more like a Formula 1 car than a typical road-going sports car. The carbon fiber body not only reduces weight but also provides exceptional strength and rigidity, allowing the car to tackle tight corners and high-speed straights with precision and confidence.

The car’s adjustable suspension system ensures that it can be fine-tuned for a variety of driving conditions, from smooth tarmac to the rigors of a race track. The open-wheel design, while visually striking, also serves a functional purpose: it improves airflow around the vehicle, contributing to both aerodynamics and cooling, crucial for the kind of high-performance driving the Mono is built for.

### **Precision Handling**

The steering of the BAC Mono is precise, quick, and offers an incredible level of feedback. With its **low center of gravity**, the car feels glued to the road, providing a sense of control and responsiveness that is hard to find in many other vehicles. The Mono’s suspension system and high-performance tires ensure that it delivers an incredibly stable ride, whether you're taking tight corners or pushing it to its limits on a race track.

Driving the Mono is a visceral experience. The car is designed to be felt as much as it is driven. With every input, you feel the direct connection between the car and the road. Its lightweight nature and finely tuned handling make it an absolute joy to drive, especially in track conditions where its true potential can be unleashed.

### **Exclusivity and Customization**

BAC takes the idea of exclusivity to heart. Each Mono is built to order, with the company offering a range of customization options to ensure that each car is unique to its owner. Whether it’s bespoke paintwork, interior finishes, or specialized performance components, the Mono is made to reflect the personality and preferences of its driver.

Additionally, BAC offers a "Mono Track Pack" option for those who want to take the performance up a notch. This package includes enhancements like track-focused tires, additional aerodynamic elements, and lighter materials that further reduce the car's weight, pushing it even closer to the performance characteristics of a full-blown race car.

### **A Thrilling Driving Experience**

The BAC Mono is more than just an amazing feat of engineering; it’s about the **experience**. This car is not meant to be a comfortable, cushioned ride. Instead, it’s about immersion, about feeling every twist in the road and every shift in the gear lever. There are no distractions—no radio, no luxury features—just a focused, raw connection with the driving experience. It’s an experience that only those who have had the privilege of driving the Mono can fully appreciate.

### **Conclusion: A Driver's Dream**

The BAC Mono is a car that represents the purest form of driving. While most hypercars focus on speed, luxury, or technology, the Mono prioritizes one thing above all: an unadulterated driving experience. Every aspect of the car is engineered with the singular purpose of delivering the most thrilling, responsive, and dynamic performance possible.

For those who value the art of driving, the **BAC Mono** is a dream come true. It's not a car for everyone, but for those who crave the purest connection between man and machine, it offers an experience that few vehicles can match. In a world where the line between road car and race car continues to blur, the BAC Mono stands out as a reminder of the joy of driving in its most unrefined, exhilarating form.

[floweryanarchy]

I'm too embarrassed to put my name on this question! This is probably super dumb, but how do you go about selling prints of your art? I have some people interested in my work, but I don't even have a working printer, much less one that could do something poster-sized. I think I've heard of websites that can print your stuff on t-shirts and send them to people. Do they also do poster-sized prints like that? What do they charge you?

There are sites I know artists use to sell their works like redbubble or Inprint and you can go about selling your artwork like that if you don’t have a printer. I looked into selling my prints that way but ended up deciding against it. I’m an anxious person when it comes to selling something that’s linked directly to my name and didn’t feel comfortable with another company being in charge in the selling aspect, especially if I have no control in quality control. If someone got sent a poor quality print I would feel horrible. But that’s just me and I know a lot of artists use Inprint to sell their works and seem to have no issues with it! As for how much they charge I have no idea, I looked into it years ago and did not retain the information. Packaging prints by hand seems more personal and rewarding to me at least.

If you can and are serious about selling artworks, I’d invest in a nicer end printer. I use the Canon Pixma for years now and it’s held up well, and prints in very high quality I’ve never had an issue with my prints being fuzzy. The largest prints I’ve done are 8.5 x 11 but it can do larger, I don’t sell actual poster sizes because I don’t have room to store cylinder packaging to keep it safe during shipping which is another factor to think about. Shipping.

Etsy is nice for a lot of things like automatically giving you shipping labels, keeping track of your sales automatically and giving you tax forms at the end of the year so it’s not a hassle. There’s also downsides with Etsy, their fees add up as well. It’s not so bad for a couple sales but when it’s all the time, that lost money adds up. And then theres the matter of purchasing sturdy materials for shipping, photo paper, and if you want to do thank you cards and not to mention PRINTER INK (it’s so expensive and runs out so fast😭)

This is just what works for me and what I’ve been doing for a couple years and I’ve been happy with my system.

I hope this helps!

[sweet7simple]

Terms and definitions that you can maybe apply to your fan works

I don't know anything about computer or mechanical engineering (it's very funny to me that I am in the Transformers fandom and I don't even care about cars), but I do care about improving my writing. I have gathered a list of terms that sound very sciencey and applicable to mechs, some from Martha Wells's "Murderbot Diaries," some from fanfiction/fandom (shout-out to the Crime in Crystals series by Aard_Rinn and Baebeyza, they wrote Transformers better than any Transformers comic/TV show did), and a lot from just surfing through Google and going, "well, what the hell is this? Okay, but what the hell is THAT?".

Also, as I was writing this post, I ended up getting sucked into this article:

And this really bloated my already long list of terms. Very easy to read if you want to glance it over yourself.

It's not an exhaustive list and who knows if it will be useful to you - but maybe you can reblog with your own add-ons of terms and definitions you think make a Transformers fan work just that much better.

The list is below the cut:

100% CPU Load - CPU is fully occupied with too many processors/applications/drivers/operations - not necessarily synonymous with an overload.

Actuators* - A device that causes a machine or other device to operate (Ex: a computerized unit instructs the actuator how to move the tires on a vehicle); create linear and rotary movement (Ex: A hydraulic actuator on a valve will move that valve in response to a sensor/signal); Linear actuators "move a piston back and forth inside a cylinder to build pressure and 'actuate', or complete an action".

* Think of actuators as devices that help produce linear motion and motors as devices that help produce rotational movement. Hence, some consider actuators as a type of motor. But a motor is not a type of actuator (jhfoster.com).

Alternator - Converts mechanical energy to electrical energy with an alternating current. The stator and rotor inside the alternator work as magnets and rotate to generate the alternating current. Then the alternating current (AC) is transformed into a direct current (DC) that charges the battery.

Archive (Archive files) - used to collect multiple data files together into a single file for easier portability and storage, or simply to compress files to use less storage space.

Arithmetic Log Unit (ALU) - the part of a central processing unit that carries out arithmetic and logic operations on the operands in computer instruction words. In some processors, the ALU is divided into two units: an arithmetic unit (AU) and a logic unit (LU).

Augment - Make something greater; increase.

Auxiliary Battery - Designed to run as a backup to the starting battery and provide power to some essential equipment like engine start/stop and other systems that require power while the engine is off to put less strain on the main battery and alternator.

Bandwidth - A measurement indicating the maximum capacity of a wired or wireless communications link to transmit data over a network connection in a given amount of time.

Behavioral Coding - A term used in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries; essential, code for behaviors.

Branch Instructions - Use programming elements like if-statements, for-loops, and return-statements; used to interrupt the program execution and switch to a different part of the code.

Branch Predictors - Track the status of previous branches to learn whether or not an upcoming branch is likely to be taken or not.

Buffer - A region of memory used to store data temporarily while it is being moved from one place to another.

Cathodes vs Anodes - Cathodes are the positive electrode while the anode is the negative electrode; electrons flow from the anode to the cathode and this creates the flow of electric charge in a battery or electrochemical cell.

Catastrophic Failure - Complete, sudden and unexpected breakdown in a machine, indicating improper maintenance.

Central Processing Unit (CPU) - Primary component of a computer that acts as its "control center"; complex set of circuitry that runs the machine's operating systems and apps; the brains of the computer. * Components: Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), Control Unit (CU), Datapath, Instruction Cycle, Registers, Combinational Logic, the Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), etc...

Clock - Determines how many instructions a CPU can process per second; increasing its frequency through overclocking will make instructions run faster, but will increase power consumption and heat output.

Combustion Chambers - An enclosed space in which combustion takes place, such as an engine; jet engines also have combustion chambers.

Condition Codes - Extra bits kept by a processor that summarize the results of an operation and that affect the execution of later instructions.

Control Bus - Manages the communication between the computer's CPU and its other components.

Control Unit (CU) - Manages the execution of instructions and coordinates data flow within the CPU and between other computer components.

Cybermetal - Element native to Cybertron and Cybertron alone.

Datapath - The path where data flows as it is processed; receives input, processes it, and sends it out to the right place when done processing; datapaths are told how to operate by the CU; depending on instructions, a datapath can route signals to different components, turn on and off different parts of itself, and monitor the state of the CPU.

Diagnostic and Data Repair Sequence - Term used in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries; exactly what it sounds like.

Diode - A semiconductor device with two terminals (a cathode and an anode), typically allowing the flow of current in one direction only.

Discrete Circuit vs Integrated Circuit- Single device with a single function (ex: Transistor, diode) vs Devices with multiple functional elements on one chip (ex: Memories, microprocessor IC and Logic IC).

Drivers - A set of files that help software (digital components, such as Microsoft Office) interface/work with hardware (physical components, such as a keyboard); allows an operating system and a device to communicate.

Electromagnetic (EM) Field - A combination of invisible electric and magnetic fields of force; used in fandom by mechs to broadcast emotions to others.

Flags - A value that acts as a signal for a function or process. The value of the flag is used to determine the next step of a program; flags are often binary flags which contain a boolean value (true or false).

Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) - Consists of an electronic control unit (ECU) and related accessors that control aircraft engine performances.

Gestation Tank - Used in mech pregnancies, you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Heads Up Display (HUD) - A part of the user interface that visually conveys information to the player during gameplay.

Heat Spreader - Often used in computer processors to prevent them from overheating during operation; transfers energy as heat from a hotter source to a colder heat sink or heat exchanger.

HUB - A device that connects multiple computers and devices to a local area network (LAN).

Inductive Charging - How I imagine berths work; wireless power transfer (ex: Wireless charger or charging pad used for phones).

Instruction Cycle - Also known as fetch-decode-execute cycle; basic operation performed by a CPU to execute an instruction; consists of several steps, each of which performs a specific function in the execution of the instruction.

Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) - The figurative blueprint for how the CPU operates and how all the internal systems interact with each other (I think of it like a blueprint for the brain).

Irising - Term used in fanfiction (specifically the Crime in Crystals series) to describe the action of the of the spark chamber opening ("The Talk", chapter 6, my absolute favorite chapter out of the entire series). I just really liked how the word sounded in that context.

Life Codes - "For those of us who were forged, Primus, through Vector Sigma, generated a pulse wave. Each one a data-saturated life code faster than thought, brighter than light, racing across Cybertron, sowing sparks..." (~Tyrest/Solomus, Volume 5 of More Than Meets the Eye)

Memory Hierarchy - Represents the relationship between caches, RAM, and main storage; when a CPU receives a memory instruction for a piece of data that it doesn't yet have locally in its registers, it will go down the memory hierarchy until it finds it.

Levels: L1 cache (usually smallest and fastest), L2 cache, L3 cache, RAM, and then main storage (usually biggest and slowest); available space and latency (delay) increase from one level to the next

Depending on the multi-core (a core is usually synonymous with a CPU) system, each core will have its own private L1 cache, share an L2 with one other core, and share an L3 with more or more cores.

Motors* - Any power unit that generates motion; electric motors work by converting electrical energy into mechanical energy... when this happens within a magnetic field, a force is generated which causes shaft rotation.

Multitasking Operating System - Allows users to run multiple programs and tasks almost simultaneously without losing data; manage system resources (such as computer memory and input/output devices), allocate resources, enable multiple users, and eliminate long wait times for program execution.

Network - A set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other.

Network Feed - The continuously updating stream of content that users encounter on networking platforms.

Neural Network - A type of machine learning process that uses interconnected nodes (like neurons) to teach computers to process data in a way similar to the human brain; a form of deep learning that can help computers learn from their mistakes and improve their time.

Nimbus - A luminous cloud or a halo surrounding a supernatural being or a saint; has been used in fanfiction synonymously or in junction with the corona of the spark.

Nodes - A connection point between devices that allows data to be sent and received between them.

Oil Sump/Oil Pan - Don't forget to change your mech's oil.

Out-Of-Order Execution - A paradigm used to minimize downtime while waiting for other instructions to finish; allows a CPU to choose the most timely instructions to execute out of an instruction queue.

Overload - Orgasm; an electrical overload occurs when too much electricity passes through a circuit, exceeding its capacity; an information overload is when a system receives more input than it can process, or a state of being overwhelmed by the amount of data presented for processing.

Pedes - Feet

Pipelining - A technique used in computer architecture that allows a processor to execute multiple instructions simultaneously, improving overall performance.

Processing Capacity - The ability and speed of a processor, and how many operations it can carry out in a given amount of time.

Program Counter - A special register in a computer processor that contains the memory address (location) of the next program instruction to be executed.

Programmable Nanobots/Nanites - Cybertronian microbots programmed to do work at the molecular level; used popularly for surface healing and pigment in mechs.

Protected Storage - Provides applications with an interface to store user data that must be kept secure or free from modification; a storage method; a function in mainframe hardware.

Protoform - Formed of an ultra-dense liquid metal and are extremely hard to damage; the most basic Cybertronian form of raw, free-flowing living metal; first stage of Cybertronian life cycle

To create a Cybertronian, you need the protoform, the life-giving spark, and alt-form information.

Register - A type of computer memory built directly into the processor or CPU that is used to store and manipulate data during the execution of instructions.

Ex: "When you run a .exe on Windows... the code for that program is moved into memory and the CPU is told what address the first instruction starts at. The CPU always maintains an internal register that holds the memory location of the next instruction to be executed [the Program Counter]"...

Resource Allocations - The process of identifying and assigning available resources to a task or project to support objectives.

Risk Assessment - Focus on identifying the threats facing your information systems, networks, and data and assessing the potential consequences should these adverse events occur.

Routine - A component of a software application that performs a specific task (ex: Saving a file).

Servomechanism - A powered mechanism producing motion or force at a higher level of energy than the input level (ex: In the brakes and steering of large motor vehicles) especially where feedback is employed to make the control automatic.

Servos - Hands

Shellcode - A small piece of executable code used as a payload, built to exploit vulnerabilities in a system or carry out malicious commands. The name comes from the fact that the shellcode usually starts a command shell which allows the attacker to control the compromised machine.

Semiconductor - A material used in electrical circuits and components that partially conduct electricity.

Semiconductor materials include silicon, germanium, and selenium.

Struts - Bones; A rod or bar forming part of a framework and designed to resist compression.

System/System Unit (in computers) - A setup that consists of both hardware and software components organized to perform complex operations/The core of your computer where all the processing happens.

Task Specific Accelerator - Circuits designed to perform one small task as fast as possible (ex: Encription, media encoding & machine learning).

Teek - Used in Transformers fandom in conjunction with EM Fields; when a mech "teeks" another mech's field, they are feeling the emotions that mech is broadcasting.

Transistor - Enables a computer to follow instructions to calculate, compare and copy data.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) - A standard plug-and-play interface that allows computers and peripheral devices to connect with each other, transfer data, and share a power source; allows data exchange and delivery of power between many types of electronics; plug-and-play interface is also a type of sexual activity used in fandom.

Warren - Used to refer to a group of minibots with their own social hierarchy and culture (Seriously, read the Crime in Crystals series, it's better than canon).

[wordpress-blaze-242745748]

An Op.Ed: Signed, Sealed, Still Oppressed.

White Lies in Black Ink.

They changed the law. So, racism ended there, right? It’s comforting, maybe. A soft little story of triumph over evil. A blanket. It says it here, in the statutes. But the notion that slavery ended on January 1, 1863 is a fallacy. A convenient truth, like most truths, is only ever half true. It gets regurgitated onto the pages of textbooks. In this case, not even a quarter true. The mindset of the oppressor cannot be undone with dry ink and a few well-to-do signatures. Legal reform without cultural repair is futile and, as it turns out, downright dangerous. Lawmakers at the time were either irresponsible, ignorant, or perhaps even more malignant than that: manipulative. Performing a Houdini sleight of hand. Look over here, not over there. Because while the law may shift, power rarely, if ever, does. Not really.

Racism. 2025. The sickness is the same as it always was. But the ailments have become more violent, more discreet, and ultimately more malignant. Especially now that the Trump era has picked the delicate scab and reopened an old wound. The blood is gushing out in every direction. Old violence, newly emboldened.

Paper Justice, Real Blood.

We signed the Proclamation. We just never kept the promise. Slavery ended. Technically. But the system didn’t collapse. It didn’t even teeter. It just rebranded and continued stronger than ever. Except now, the distance between the hand and the harm is harder to measure. Leaving those responsible without repercussions. Harming even more people than before.  Power mutates faster than legislation ever could. The moment one door is closed, another is wedged open by privilege in patent leather. From Jim Crow to stop-and-frisk, from water fountains to voter suppression and gerrymandering, the machinery whirrs along, fine-tuned to preserve the status quo for the powerful and the rich.

Chain gangs replaced chains. Sharecropping replaced the whip. Later, prisons would replace plantations. Efficient, profitable, and shrouded behind legalese to protect the autocrats and appease the masses.

So too would the police, stopping anyone who didn’t fit the face they had been taught was ‘superior’ in its pallor. The Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation, but without the redistribution of wealth, access to the arts, education, and healthcare remains out of reach. Except of course for those born into unmitigated privilege. And the gulf between those who have and those who have not is only deepening.

Political Correctness: A Bandage Over Rot

When the law began to forbid explicit hate, these nasty views and nasty words went underground. Society didn’t purge it. Didn’t progress. Instead, it buried it under already tainted soil, festering, fermenting and tripling in potency. Political correctness was a further accelerant. A damp cloth soaked in gasoline, stifling the flames in the immediate but garnering the oxygen for ignition later.

Racists, misogynists, homophobes began to feel even more victimised in their own narrative. Their imaginary power had already been diminished by the changes in equality and diversity laws. Now they were, in their minds, being silenced.

 “You can’t say anything these days” became a rallying cry, not of the oppressed, but of the entitled. As if equality were a muzzle for their whiteness. As if colonising, raping, and pillaging the home of others were a badge of honour. A symbol of their hard-earned superiority. The smug Republican army rubbed their grubby hands with glee and added fuel to the smouldering fire, blaming economic downturns on immigrants. Diversity legislation was framed as enabling others to steal the white man’s job. The public was force-fed the lie that unqualified Black and Brown people were stealing jobs from the deserving white man. A truth that is simply a lie. Believing something with vigour does not make it true.

The bigot became the victim in his own imagination. And by now, the ‘other’ had been firmly planted as the antagonist in the story.

Hate Isn’t Born. It’s Taught.

Hate is heirloomed, like legacy silverware, that no amount of vinegar can polish. It’s passed down through dinner table comments, through school curricula that erase or distort reality, through governments that refuse to reckon with the decisions made in the name of their country. There was no truth commission for slavery or any real consequences for colonialism. Just a herd of rich white men pretending the past was over.

But the past wasn’t over. It isn’t over. History was archived, not exorcised. And so, Europe got the rise of the right and Brexit. The USA got MAGA. Anti-trans bills pushed by men raised on “tolerance” but trained by culture to despise difference. When trauma festers, the consequences are terrifying but inevitable nonetheless.

The Scorned Majority Complex

We’re fully entrenched in the era of the spurned majority. The straight white Christian man told that he’s still in charge but feels under attack. He’s never had to fight. Never been challenged and has no idea how to defend what he cannot fathom. The Karens who fully believe that consequences are persecution. Though none have ever had to deal with real persecution. They drive their SUVs safely down the highway without ever being pulled over for having a brown face.

Opportunistic politicians bemoan “wokeness” like it’s the second coming of the bubonic plague. As if respecting other human beings that may look or think differently is a deadly disease.

At the very heart of all the blustering, it is just fragile entitlement reacting violently to the idea that others might share the stage. Not just share it. Dominate it. It’s a territorial beast at its very worst. And, that horror of perceived loss twists the fragile ego into a fireball of blind rage. Blind to see that the enemy is not the ‘other’ but the very same blood from which they hail. Albeit, richer and more powerful. And when that fragility is armed, algorithm-stuffed, and economically panicked, the result is brutality under the guise of a patriot.

The Mob Got Its Mascot

Make America Great Again.

The slogan that catapulted Trump into his first term as President isn’t just a handy media soundbite. Media genius, it might be, but it’s a confession. Stark and emboldened, it represents a yearning not for the old times when white, straight, Christian men dominated. Throw in a Black man who dared to run for president. Who dared and won. The silent seethe simmers at the top of the pot waiting to boil over in waves.  It isn’t a movement. It’s overspill in a cape of stars and stripes at a costume party.

And that tantrum has become the machine. He has dragged the underbelly to the surface. Trump gorges on imagined persecution: banning books, signing off on cruelty, and deporting whoever fits the day's distraction whilst he guts the economy and doles money out to freeloading capitalists. All the while firing up the base. The very people who will be harmed by his own economic greed and desire for infamy. Trans children criminalised for existing. Immigrants persecuted. Women being told that liberty ends at their uterus. Politicians draped in red ties and evangelical scripture, cheer for forced births and clink crystal glasses overflowing with Moet as they slash food stamps and Medicaid.

Trump Republicans never hid their aims. They didn’t need to. The MAGA base had already learned from him exactly what the systems of power have always taught. As long as your violence is coded in patriotism or wrapped in policy, it won’t be punished. It will be platformed and rewarded.

White MAGA, in hindsight, can hardly be seen as a surprise. But for the vote of Black or Hispanic Americans, or any woman at all, to be galvanised as it has been seems utterly shocking. But it’s survival at its worst. Survival and systemic putrefaction.

Some voted for Trump because they’ve been raised to believe that proximity to power will protect them. That aligning with the strongman will save them. Pile on decades of evangelical, conservative Catholic messaging that equates morality with white male authority, then Trump, in all his grotesque sanctimonious glory, is just another vessel for divine justice.

There are others, who lack the critical thinking or research skills to understand how information can be manipulated, fall prey to misinformation. Fox-reared myths, WhatsApp disinformation campaigns, TikTok fear-mongering about immigrants and trans kids. They absorb it all like drowned sponges.

Of course, aside from the games of power, economic anxiety is also a huge driving force. They vote for the man they believe is an entrepreneur, a job-creator and a self-made strongman who will punish the “freeloaders.” It doesn’t matter that none of this is true. They just opt for the one that will make their family safest. Perceptions are everything.

When you grow up in a culture that trains you from birth to fear the bottom rung more than the steel-capped toes on your back, voting for the steel feels like the only option. It’s symptomatic of what happens when a system built for the rich crushes you into compliance, then teaches you to thank it for the bruises and broken knee caps.

So, this is where we are. Delusion has become doctrine. The ‘other’ the enemy. The poor are getting poorer. And all the while the rich are lining the pockets with gold and flying private jets to Scotland for a round of golf.

The Clock’s Ticking. Pick a Side.

Changing laws is easy. Changing hearts is not.

Healing and justice require more than signatures and handshakes. It demands redistribution, education, unlearning. Relearning.  Acceptance. It begs the powerful to relinquish. It needs the comfortable get uncomfortable.

It’s not enough to be quietly anti-racist. And it’s not enough to be anti-racist only within the safety of your echo chamber. What truly matters is what’s said, and done, out loud, where it counts. Racism and homophobia must be challenged openly. That means having the uncomfortable conversations at family gatherings, calling out your friends and relatives when they say something harmful, and making it clear, consistently and publicly, that racism will not be tolerated. Silence protects the status quo.

Discomfort is the cost of change.

The more insular we become, the less willing we are to talk to one another, to listen, to learn, to connect. But most people, regardless of where they come from, are just trying to live their lives, feed their families, find a little peace. It would be easier to exist in this world if we sat down and shared a meal every once in a while. Tried to understand. Is there evil in the world? Of course. But it’s not the little guy trying to make his rent, or the woman working three jobs, or the family just trying to stay safe. It's not the neighbour who speaks a different language, or the stranger who worships differently. The real danger lies in how easily we’re convinced to fear one another, instead of sitting down and breaking bread. 

Progress isn’t the removal of a statute. Or a scribble in the appendix of a statute. It’s a sustained, lived transformation. An acceptance and reverence for the differences that unite us as humans. And it’s speaking up when it matters.

It takes more than nodding along. More than sending private messages of support. It takes standing up and shouting hell no when it would be far easier to stay on the sidelines. It takes losing things. Comfort, approval, reputation. Followers. Because you refuse to let hate slide.

The rot remains unchecked. Out in the open. Tailor suited, and far deadlier for its years of externally imposed silence. You saw it. You see it. But you were too afraid to make dinner uncomfortable. We need to stop mistaking laws for justice and start naming it for what it truly is. The paperwork of appeasement. We need to do better.

Because real progress stands the fuck up to be counted. Especially when it’s white.

Source: An Op.Ed: Signed, Sealed, Still Oppressed.

[literallymechanical]

How do they keep up the fuel input into a fusion reactor? And how do they get the specified fuel mix into the reaction area if it’s sealed?

Oh that is a very good question! So, yes, the vacuum vessel is sealed, but there are plenty of vacuum passthroughs and other equipment that sticks into the torus. In this case, fuel is added to the fusion plasma in a couple of ways: the old-school method where it is "puffed" in as a gas, or as is more common now, it is fired in at extremely high velocity as frozen pellets of hydrogen isotopes.

Here is how the frozen pellet injectors are set up on DIII-D, in San Diego. Some are fired directly at the midplane at extremely high speeds (like, 1000 m/s (over 2000 mph!)), whereas some take a more circuitous, slower route – you get better fuel penetration when launching from the inner wall of the torus, even with slower pellets. This is done with a burst of pressurized light gas, usually hydrogen.

Here's a 1.8 mm diameter deuterium pellet bursting into plasma as it is launched from the midplane of ASDEX-Upgrade at 800 meters per second (1800 miles per hour):

pchooo

However, traditional gas-pressurized systems have a problem with a slow rate of fire (tens of Hz) and introducing potentially unwanted gas from the launcher. How to solve these problems?

ASDEX-Upgrade in Germany has pioneered a new method of rapid pellet launch: extrude a cylinder of frozen fuel into a centrifuge, which slices off pellets and launches them into the reactor! No pressurized gas needed. This iteration can do it at 70 Hz, but future centrifuges could go much faster.

Pellet injectors have more uses than just fueling! These are the nozzles of a "shattered pellet injector," also in ASDEX-Upgrade.

Rather than launch a tiny pellet of fuel, these have a sharp angle at the end that shatters a giant pellet (3 or 4 cm wide) of frozen heavy gasses (neon, argon, etc) and/or deuterium just before it enters the plasma. The sudden burst of fragments will do all sorts of funky things, like stop the fusion plasma dead in its tracks. This is an important way to mitigate disruptions that might damage the reactor.

For a very thorough overview of pellet injection technology, check out this paper out of Oak Ridge National Lab. They are one of the leading pellet injection research labs, and their launchers are installed in tokamaks all over the world:

[trakaid4u]

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[rupasriymts]

[bacony-cakes]

driving my 1960s detroit muscle car down the freeway and suddenly a particularly voloptuous beegirl jumps out from the verge and lands on the hood of my car (with such force that my car's super cool hidden headlights fly out of the grille and are crushed into thousands of pieces as i drive straight over them) and she starts

humping my car's giant hood scoop (causing my 14.2 litre v12 supercharger engine to start choking and spluttering from lack of air and abundance of poorly-understood mucous substances in the cylinders)

laying down on the hood (which is about as smooth and flat as pre-used tinfoil by this point) and squeezing her h-cup bee titties right in my view (filling my car's wiper fluid pump with large amounts of honey (which would later crystalize and force me to get the entire system replaced))

sitting on my windscreen and jiggling/smacking her own fluffy bee ass (as it it hard to see where you're going with fat bee cheeks and pussy — which could be modestly described as "spread out further than margarine on a budget airline's sandwich" — directly in front of you, i accidentally pit maneuver three cars into oncoming traffic and demolate a small roadside petting zoo before she goes back to filling all of the gaps in my car's thorougly befucked paneling with boob honey)

and so after i am forced to bring a heap of scrap metal that wikipedia would have previously defined as a "sports coupe" to the nearest layby and the circumstances decide that i must have hot steamy lesbian sex with this insectoid interloper.

after the encounter, i am left with naught but a decrepit husk of an automobile covered on all surfaces (interior and exterior) with various viscous fluids, and a scrap of paper with the cellphone number of the beegirl. she immediately jumps onto the long nose of a semi truck and attemps the same stunt again, only to be surprised when the vehicle gets stuck on a railroad crossing 85 miles later and she ends up dazed among various other yellow-orange tinted fruits (i.e. lemons, tangerines, grapefruits, and obviously, sweet oranges) in a large heap along the side of the track in the sleepy city of douglas wyoming

[whirligig-girl]

(zoom in!)

Two double-headers on the Trans-Gooiw Railroad passing each other in the hills, dragging long freight trains behind them, during the early days of the Pan-Mellanus Oil Crisis.

More mellanoid trains: Guz's Model Garratt | Museum-piece carrying rocket parts | Advanced Steam Tank Engine | Guz's bigger model Garratt | Tram and Coal Mine loco sketches.

The diesel-hydraulic at the front of the foreground consist, already somewhat old and tired by this point, dates back to around the time period that steam engines were originally retired on Mellanus. It's not very fuel efficient as it is, and with the oil rations, diesels can not handle the trains on their own any longer.

For a few years now the railroads have been taking their steam engines out of mothballs and museums, as coal was comparatively dirt-cheap. Still though, the various maintenance and operational complexities of running steam locomotives resulted in a lot of losses for the railroads.

Pictured here behind the diesel is an early attempt at the Advanced Steam Engine concept, modifying a member of a very prolific and successful 2-8-0+0-8-2 Garratt class with a gas producer combustion system, more modern cylinders and valve gear, and entirely replacing the cab with an electronic control system (with the more diesel-like control stands moved to separate cabs on the tenders). The electronic control scheme allows for the steam engine to be connected to a diesel engine to be run as a multiple unit, cutting down operational costs. However, as a modified prototype, this locomotive lacks some of the other features which exemplified the Advanced Steam era, such as modular ashpans, computerized control, and precision engineering.

On the other track, moving the opposite direction, we see a double header of two steam locomotives, another 2-8-0+0-8-2 loaned from the Slaibsgloth Coal Mine Railroad, and a 2-10-2 'easy' type non-articulated loco leads the train. In this case, there is no electronic connection, so a crew of four mellanoid slimes is necessary to operate the train.

The eagle-eyed railway fans will notice that there are radiators for a dynamic brake on the diesel, yet the diesel is an electric. Diesel-electric dynamic brakes switch the traction motors into generators, and dump the electricity out as waste heat--but there's no traction motors on a hydraulic. So why the radiator fins? There's still a dynamic engine brake on the diesel-hydraulic, so it still needs to be able to dissipate heat, especially on the mountain routes.

WIP images follow:

[stigblomqvists]

INSIGHT

In the 80s, Group B had a vast collection of automotive beasts from different car manufacturing companies. One of these companies included Peugeot, where their 205 T16 simply rocketed through tracks. This Peugeot in particular, model 205 T16, absolutely dominated rallies within the golden age that was Group B. The 205 T16 technically was the most successful car in Group B with its 16 victories out of 26 starts and lastly 2 world championships to its name.

NOTABLE DRIVERS

1. Juha Kankkunen 🇫🇮 2. Ari Vatanen 🇫🇮 3. Timo Salonen 🇫🇮 ENGINE SPECS

Cylinders: L4 Displacement: 1775cm^3 Power: 200HP [at precisely 6750RPM] Fuel System: Turbocharged Multipoint Injection Fuel: Petrol

PERFORMANCE SPECS

Top Speed: 130mph [209km/h] 0-60mph: 6s

TRANSMISSION SPECS

Drive Type: AWD Gearbox: 5-speed manual