#steel construction process

[mspsteels]

You can rely on us to provide the best goods and services when it comes to Stainless Steel Construction. We are dedicated to offering our clients specialized solutions that are tailored to their demands as one of the top steel construction suppliers in the business.

[tatadigeca]

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[steeldispatcher]

 A Revolution in Steel Shopping:Steeloncall

In the ever-evolving world of construction and manufacturing, the importance of high-quality steel cannot be overstated. From towering skyscrapers to intricate machinery, steel serves as the backbone of countless projects, providing strength, durability, and reliability. However, procuring the right steel products can often be a daunting and time-consuming task, fraught with challenges such as fluctuating prices, inconsistent quality, and unreliable suppliers.

[market-insider]

Iron and Steel Market's Journey in Fueling the Engine of Progress

The global iron and steel market size is expected to reach USD 2,253.52 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. expanding at a CAGR of 3.8% from 2023 to 2030. Rising demand for heavy machinery and growth in the construction industry is expected to augment market growth over the forecast period.

Iron And Steel Market Report Highlights

Based on iron ore application, the steel segment is expected to register a growth rate of 2.0% in terms of revenue over the forecast period. The production of steel is expected to increase over the forecast period on account of rising investments in the construction of smart cities, led by increasing urbanization rates.

For example, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM project is anticipated to consume the largest amount of iron and steel. Further, at a capacity of 650 tons per day, the NEOM project will commence hydrogen production in 2026, which will be used by green steel and cement industries, for the city to run at 100% renewable energy.

Based on steel end-use, the building & construction segment captured the largest revenue share of the market, with over 45.0% in 2022. Rising investment by emerging economies to modernize their infrastructure is expected to propel the demand for the product.

Based on region, the Middle East & Africa is expected to achieve a revenue growth rate of 4.3%, over the forecast period. This growth is primarily driven by the emergence of infrastructure projects in the Middle East, which in turn is boosting the demand for products in the region.

For More Details or Sample Copy please visit link @: Iron And Steel Market Report

Over 98% of the total iron ore transforms into pig iron, which is a crucial component in the production of steel. Finished steel products are used in various industries, such as heavy industry, construction, automotive, and consumer goods. In heavy industry, steel is a strong material that can handle heavy weights and tough conditions. It provides stability and safety to heavy machinery, equipment, and infrastructure by maintaining their structural integrity. Thus, it is widely used in heavy industries such as shipbuilding, defense products manufacturing, and oil & gas.

Investment in the oil & gas industry is expected to drive the demand for steel over the forecast period. For instance, in April 2022, Cairn Oil & Gas, a Vedanta Group subsidiary, announced investing USD 700.0 million in oil & gas exploration projects in India. The company plans to invest in 100 exploratory wells, including the project in the Barmer region of Rajasthan, India.

Despite the rising penetration in various end-use industries, the product faces hindrances in the automotive industry. Electric vehicles prefer to use aluminum because of its lightweight and robust characteristics. This lightweight property helps reduce fuel consumption and lowers carbon emissions. As a result, aluminum is increasingly being used as a substitute for steel in electric vehicles, and this trend is expected to negatively affect the global market growth in the foreseeable future.

Region-wise, Asia Pacific is projected to undergo substantial revenue growth with a CAGR of 3.6% across the forecast period. This growth can be attributed to substantial investments in the region's construction and infrastructure sectors of developing economies. For instance, The Indonesian parliament approved the Capital City Bill in January 2022, paving the way for constructing a new capital city in the East Kalimantan province. The country has plans to invest USD 35 billion in the project, which is projected to be finalized by 2024.

IronAndSteel #SteelIndustry #Metallurgy #SteelProduction #SteelManufacturers #SteelMarketTrends #MetallurgicalProcesses #SteelDemand #SteelProducts #SteelTrade #ConstructionMaterials #EconomicProgress #MetalsMarket #MetalInnovation #GlobalInfrastructure #Manufacturing #IndustrialDevelopment #InfrastructureDevelopment #EconomicGrowth #GlobalCommerce

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

After emerging from its egg, the humble squire, but one of a clutch of as many as fifty, gorges itself on porridge oats before finding itself a safe space beneath a shield or within the buttresses of a castle where it can undergo its extraordinary transformation into a knight.

Once safe, the squire wraps itself in spun chainmail which develops into a sturdy, protective cuirass to guard it from natural predators such as clergymen, lords, and even fully mature knights.

After a sennight, the squire begins to emerge from the cuirass as a juvenile knight. This time and energy intensive process, aided by the squires specially developed dagger, can take a full day.

Once freed from the cuirass, it takes a further three days for the juvenile knight's plate armour to harden. This armour is formed of interlocking plates, which depending on the genus of the knight may be made from iron, steel, or in some cases even bronze or copper.

During this process, some sub-species of knights also develop their heraldic colours. These are typically displayed through shielding or upon the knight's cape, which will usually fully unfurl in the few hours after they emerge from the cuirass. These colours are often used to attract a mate, indicate allegiance, or as showy threat displays.

Once a knight has reached sexual maturity, it will develop a lance; a hard, long protuberance used to attack and ward off competitors. Territory challenges are regular and deadly, and mature knights can often be observed jousting in the field, during which they rush at each other with their lances. Often, this results in the shattering of a lance, which will lead to the knight's death.

During breeding season, knights will construct an intricate bower to attract a mate. The choosing of a mate is demonstrated through the giving and receiving of a favour, entering the two knights in a season-long bond. Favour-stealing is extremely common, especially amongst younger knights.

Despite their territorial nature, wild knights are very social, and thrive best in areas where they are able to feast and play fight with other knights. Solitary knights can become depressed and reclusive, and have been known to create vast, maze-like bowers, steal mates, and invade pack knight's feast days. Solitary knights are often easy to identify thanks to the vibrant green patina of their armour.

[ghostbsuter]

Water drips down in the corner, the steady dop drop drop— does wonders for the bat.

Batman has been taken, tied up, and undressed of his utility belt. It takes him a second to figure out who took him, by the large but empty and run down warehouse, the sound of the shore not far away.

The docks. He shuffles, bound and comm off.

Then, the steel enforced door slams open and Joker enters.

"Batsy!" He calls, overjoyed. The man walks to the bound vigilante and crouches to his height.

"It's been so long, hasn't it been?"

The vigilante grunts. "Joker."

"Today will be different." He goes on, "today, we have," the crime Prince drums his fingers on Batman's thigh. "A guest!"

He freezes at that, Joker has a civilian.

(Oracle sends out the message, her voice firm, and the coords are shared to the rest of the clan in seconds as she looks at her monitor. Batman's red dot at the harbour bright.)

"I'm a guest now?" The voice of a child asks, it brings slight confusion that the boy wasn't tied nor harmed in any way.

It's relief that he seems okay, but the danger of standing next to the Joker has Batman wiggling in his restrains.

"Is that a promotion or demotion for son?"

A brief look of annoyance enters Joker before being smoothed out, the boy is dealing with a delicate time bomb. Uncomfortably close to the madman.

(He hurries in the process of breaking free.)

"My son! My blood!" Sings the clown, throwing his hands around the boy's shoulders and prancing around.

Which brings another question.

Son?

Cool lighting hits the boy's head and the tuffs of pink, blue and green become more obvious, hidden beneath black hair previously.

Joker and Harley have a child. A son.

He will visit harley later. The boy comes first.

"Dante! Danyal! Daniel?" Joker croons, shaking the boy. "What was it again?" He stops, turning his son toward him with a grin.

(Robin drops down behind him, hiding, katana ready to be swung.)

"Danny, actually," the child— Danny– shrugs off the hands and steps back. Unflinching from the judging stare, simply waving off the hands creeping to his throat.

"Danny," the name is tested, and the Prince of Crime hums to himself. "We can always replace it as Joker Jr! It fits you better than Danny."

(Red Robin and Spoiler get on position above them, ready to pounce from the construction pillars.)

"Yeah, I don't know about that." He chuckles nervous, catching Batman's eyes and—

His eyes alone scream of fear, scared– scared—!!

"We will get you an acid flower, a new suit as well, the hoodie looks horrible on you." The man notes, humming.

"I prefer hammers." Danny replies with tense shoulders.

Joker clicks his tongue, "You always went after your mother." he hisses, outright glaring at his son now. His hand tightened around the crowbar he'd gathered not long ago.

"I mean," he hesitates, eye trailing off the Joker and over his shoulder. "I did come out of her."

The sound of a loaded gun shatters the silence, and Joker is pulling Danny, switching their positions and pushing him right in front of the gun in Red Hood's hand.

"Always a coward, hiding behind others, aren't you." Danny stops himself from squealing. That's the Red Hood!

(Escrima sticks light up with electricity as Red Hood speaks.)

Joker is ticked off, party ruined and surrounded now that he looks around.

Oh well, he can get his son on his villain path another day.

Cackling, he evades the escrimas, dodging the wonder boy and evading the twin attacks from above.

He pulls out a trigger and presses the bright red Button.

"Have fun bats and birds!"

The warehouse is completely flooded with fear gas, scarecrow wouldn't be mad he sacrificed one of his warehouses, will he?

It's all blurry. In one moment, his view is shrouded, and he's coughing. In another, he gets picked up and brought outside, the Joker gone.

An oxygen mask is placed on him by a paramedic, being handed off to an ambulance that had been called.

Peeking around, he sees Red Hood (!) still lingering around. Danny catches his eye and with a wave, the man is walking towards him.

He simply crosses his arms and tilts his head, waiting.

"Could I get a picture?" Danny blurts out, flushing after and coughing, holding the oxygen mask in his lap.

Red Hood makes a show of his shoulder sagging before crouching down and leaning toward him.

Later, Danny will look at the picture with a boyish grin, crooked and charming.

.・゜-: ✧ :-

A continuation

[handweavers]

"Those who point to the lumpenproletariat as the revolutionary vanguard disregard the objective laws of historical development. In pre-capitalist societies, poverty and oppression were even greater than under capitalism. But oppression in itself, no matter how great, does not create the basis for the struggle to abolish oppression.

Because of the specific nature of exploitation under capitalism, the working class, which collectively operates the mass production process of the privately owned monopolies, is transformed into the gravedigger of the system. That is why Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.”

No fundamental change—or even a challenge to the monopolists—can occur without the working class. And today the proportion of Black workers in basic industries such as steel, coal, auto, transport and others is transforming the prospects for the class struggle and Black liberation.

The degree of exploitation of Black workers is clearly much greater than that of white workers. Nevertheless, the collective form of exploitation in the decisive mass production industries is suffered by all workers. This creates the objective basis for solidarity, for their unity and leadership in the struggle against the monopolist ruling class.

At the same time, history has assigned a doubly significant role to Black workers—as the leaders and backbone of the Black liberation movement, and as a decisive component of the working class leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole.

It is the monopolists’ fear of Black, white, Brown, Yellow, Red and working class unity, which in turn can form the basis for still broader people’s unity, that is behind racism and anti-Communism, the main ideological weapons of the ruling class.

Leninism, the Marxism of the imperialist epoch, is the ideological weapon of the working class. It is the scientific guide that enables the working class to combine its struggle with national liberation movements against imperialism.

No other theory has served to free a single working class, a single people, from imperialism anywhere in the world. Beginning with the October revolution, only those guided by Marxism-Leninism have been able to free themselves from class and national oppression and take the road of socialist construction."

— "Objective Laws of Development" Henry Winston, The Crisis of the Black Panther Party (1971)

[reasonsforhope]

"An upcoming community center in Tanzania will be defined by its cutting-edge 3D-printed design. However, rather than being built from layered concrete as you'd usually expect with 3D-printed projects, its walls will be created using locally sourced soil.

The community center is being headed by Hassell, in collaboration with Australian-based charity foundation One Heart, for the Hope Village in Tanzania. It forms part of a wider plan to provide housing, a school, childcare and skills training to vulnerable young girls in Kibaha, eastern Tanzania.

"The Hope Village community hall design seeks to create a beautiful, functional, safe and uplifting environment that provides both hope and education for vulnerable girls," says Mark Loughnan, Principal and Head of Design at Hassell. "The hall is a welcoming space that creates an innovative central activity hub that also connects with its surrounding environment. The design and building process for the hall aims to engage the community and provide ongoing opportunities for local participation and education throughout construction."

Structurally, the community center is quite complex. Its walls (which are not load-bearing) will be built using soil sourced within 25 km (15.5 miles) of the site and a WASP 3D printer. WASP has been researching this stuff for years now and a previous project used a mixture of mud, straw, rice husk and lime. A similar process will be happening here, with a clay based earthen mixture being extruded out of a nozzle in layers to build up the walls. A representative at Hassell told us that the walls will also be reinforced with a thin wire mesh between layers.

Inside, the design brief calls for a large, open floorplan that suits the local climate, with a limited number of columns to ensure its flexibility. To achieve this, Hassell has conceived a central steel beam that serves as the structural spine of the hall. This will support a roof made from locally sourced timber sections. The roof will feature cladding made of readily available corrugated metal sheet panels, helping to keep costs down.

The project also involves the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, IAAC, and ClarkeHopkinsClarke. We've no word yet on when it's expected to be completed, though prototype walls have already been produced.

Pictured: A prototype of the community center's 3D printed walls has already been created.

-via NewAtlas, August 13, 2024

[digitalsymbiote]

Your first Sync

The first time you step into your mechs cockpit, it is with something like reverence. You'd been preparing for this moment for months (well, your entire life, really); hours upon hours in the training sims, harsh training regimens, a drug cocktail of neuro-stims, and a whole suite of pilot integration augments grafted onto your body.

You swear you can feel the metal beneath your skin buzzing with anticipation as you settle into the cradle custom built just for you. Not just any pilot can fly any Mech. Each Mech is custom built for their pilot, and each pilot is molded to fit that Mech. A strange kind of synthetic symbiosis, irreplacable partners. You aren't entirely sure why that is the case, the ads are always hazy on those details, but you've always seen each Mech with the same pilot, standing triumphantly alongside each other.

Your heart pounds in your chest as you wonder what it will feel like, to finally integrate with your Mech. You've dreamt of this moment since the first time you saw the propaganda vids. Giant metal machines of war, and their integrated organic pilots. You'd felt a longing then, one you didn't quite understand, a longing for steel plates and thundering autocannons. It wasn't until years later that you finally recognized that feeling as dysphoria.

But now you're finally here, finally about to cross that threshold and grasp what you'd dreamt of all those years ago.

You relax into the cradle and let the integration systems come to life. The cockpit closes around you and you feel the cold metal of the link cables sliding into the ports grafted onto your body. You shiver, both from the cold, and the anticipation.

click

A deluge of data rushes through your mind, integration processes blinking through your awareness as sensations expand out of your flesh body and into your new metal one. It's overwhelming, it's joyous, it's… Euphoric. You feel tears running down the cheeks of your flesh body before the synchronization is even complete. For the first time in your life, you feel… whole.

And then it speaks.

"Welcome, Pilot Caster."

That's… the voice of the training AI…? You recognize it from the simulation runs. What is it doing here, in your Mech?

"I am Integrated Mechanized Personality Construct designation P-Zero-L-X." The voice is being broadcast straight into your thoughts, you realize. Somehow that doesn't bother you. "It is good to see you again."

Something finally clicks for you, hearing that. This wasn't just a training AI, this was your training AI. All those hours in the simulation chamber, the techs had been calibrating this IMP to your neural system. You smile at that. You couldn't ask for a better companion.

"Good to see you too, Polux." You respond, knowing that the techs had tailored this IMPs designation just for you. It was a nice touch, that nod to Pilot tradition. "it's nice to finally meet you properly."

You feel her smile back, warmth flooding your chest as the docking clamps finally release your shared body.

"All systems are green, ready to launch on your mark, Pilot Caster."

Your muscles tense, flesh and metal alike, quivering in excitement. Your afterburners ignite in preparation.

"Mark!"

[odinsblog]

Everything about the Starship was the result of a series of decisions designed to make spaceflight cheaper. The methane fuel. The steel structure. The method of construction. Even the rocket’s enormous size. All of it was a gamble to create a system that is fully reusable, bringing the cost of getting to orbit down to a small fraction of what it is today and making space almost infinitely more accessible.

However, one decision in the process didn’t just result in the destruction of the rocket, it generated a cascade of failures, one that’s likely to set the program back by a least a year, erasing the chance of NASA’s scheduled return to the Moon in the process. That decision is 100% on Elon Musk.

HERE’S THE TL;DR VERSION

The no-clamps slow throttle-up meant Starship stayed on the pad for a long time, throwing up concrete, rock, and sand in all directions, damaging the pad, nearby facilities, and Starship itself.

By the time it left the pad, that debris had already destroyed three of Starship’s engines and likely damaged valves and systems that would lead to additional engine failures as well as an incorrect fuel mixture.

Starship was slow to reach every point in the flight plan, suggesting that other engines were not able to throttle up to compensate for the lost engines.

At what should have been stage separation, either software errors or more smashed hardware kept the main booster firing long after it should have shut down.

The result was an uncontrolled spin that required Starship to be destroyed.

WHY THIS IS 100% ELON MUSK’S FAULT

Starship is the work of hundreds of talented engineers and thousands of employees who put their best into making this thing go. The design is extremely daring, and something of a wonder. The engines are amazing, even if they have demonstrated that reliability is currently lacking. The whole system of construction promises to revolutionize the space industry.

But there are two parts that were left out of Starship that absolutely doomed this flight and the decision not to include them falls right with the guy at the end of the first row at “Star Command.”

Those parts were not parts for the rocket. They were parts for the launch pad.

For some reason, Musk became convinced early on that he did not want the launch tower to have:

A flame-diverter or flame trench to redirect the blast from the booster’s engines

A water deluge system to dump a massive amount of water around the launch tower during liftoff

The launch facilities at Kennedy have both of these. Even the launch pads used for the much smaller Falcon 9 have both a flame trench and a water deluge. They help to protect not just the launch pad, and the surrounding area, they also help to reduce the noise. Which sounds trivial, but that noise is energy. That’s what broke up the concrete under the Starship Stage Zero, not the fire. That’s what sent car-sized chunks flying in all directions.

A flame diverter and a water deluge would have greatly reduced, or even eliminated, the damage to the area around the pad. They would have prevented the blow back of debris that damaged Starship before it even left the ground. It might have headed off the whole cascade of events that resulted in that button being pressed 4 minutes into the flight.

We don’t have to guess about whose decision it was not to implement these systems, because Musk already said he decided to skip these systems over the recommendations of his engineers. Musk even had a preview of what was going to happen, as past test flights of the upper stage also resulted in significant spalling of concrete structures and damage to at least one of the ships. He just made them try different kinds of concrete.

The parts for a water deluge were actually on site, ready to install, but Musk decided to forego that installation—likely so he could enjoy the pun of launching his super-joint on 4/20. Which was something Musk had joked about doing months ago.

Hopefully he enjoyed the joke, because the EPA and FAA are going to be thinking long and hard before they authorize another flight from Boca Chica. All those engineers, and all those workers, and all their good work, is held hostage to Musk’s whims.

Also a victim of Musk’s decision to leave these vital pieces off the table? The Artemis Program at NASA. Musk has already been awarded the contract to create the first lunar lander for the new program, but that lander is absolutely dependent on Starship. It’s a sure bet that Musk won’t have his part of the program ready on schedule. It’s going to be some time before we even so another test flight.

In the meantime, SpaceX can repair the damage, build a flame diverter, install that deluge system, clean up the software, and ditch the whole “pitch over” means of stage separation for something simpler—like using the second stage engines to push the stages apart with an unignited shot of methane.

See you in 2024, Starship.

Maybe.

👉🏿 https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/22/2165317/-A-Starship-Post-mortem-Why-the-giant-rocket-failed-and-why-it-s-Elon-Musk-s-fault

[mspsteels]

When it comes to architecture, steel is utilized for building work that not only has to fulfill its function and be durable, but also needs to create style, and stainless steel is perfect for both of these goals.

[thewritingrowlet]

The Guardian Angel, ft. ICHILLIN' Joonie

tags: cum-in-mouth, deepthroat, quickie, creampie (both type), anal, rough, daddy kink

word count: 8k+

warning: mention of firearms and depiction of use of firearms; reader discretion is advised.

author's note: I saw this picture of Joonie holding a toy gun and said "fuck it", so here we are. I wanted to get this fic out ASAP so that I could start working on The Outing Trip 3 and the ideas that are currently sitting in my inbox. Joonie is referred to as Junhee in this fic, btw.

-

“Excuse me, Mr. Director”, Mr. Kang, your chauffeur, calls out to you, waking you up from your peaceful nap, “we have arrived, sir”. “Hngh? We have?”, you say, rubbing your eyes to speed up the process, “can I ask what time this is?”. Mr. Kang looks at his watch, “it is 8:09 pm, sir”. You look outside the window of the car and see that it is dark out there. “Any news about the Guardian Angel, Mr. Kang?”, you ask. “The Angel is in position, sir. I was asked by the Angel to tell you to mind where you stand and not break line of sight—I’d also like to remind you that I’m keeping an eye on you as well, Mr. Director”, Mr. Kang explains as he shows you the gun on his hip. “Thank you, Mr. Kang. Be safe, okay? We can’t afford to lose you. I’ll see you in less than an hour”, you say to him before putting on an earpiece and getting out of the car.

“In case you forgot how you’ve ended up in this situation, let’s do a quick recap”, your brain says before starting. “You, Han Jinwoo, are the founder and director of a handful of companies, one of them being a nickel mining company that mainly operates in a developing country that is known for its messy politics. Over the past few years, you’ve been receiving extreme threats and defamations from people all over the world, including your own countrymen, for, and I quote: ‘destroying both the environment and the people of the country by ways of exploitation for capitalistic greed'. Those threats have led you to getting armored cars and extra security to keep an eye on you in public”. “Thank you for reminding me, brain; that was super helpful”, you say to yourself.

So here you are, standing in front of an empty lot that you’ve bought for an ungodly amount of money. You’re planning to build a new office building so that you can house 2 of your smaller companies here because the rent on the current building is getting ridiculous, and you’re here to meet some architects and engineers to talk about the construction.

Before you get closer to the construction site, you want to make sure that the Angel has eyes on you. You turn around and scan the buildings across the street, hoping that you’ll see the Angel. “Looking for me, director?”, you hear the Guardian Angel say in a calm but serious tone from your earpiece, “you don’t have a sniper scope like I do; you’re not seeing shit, love”. You bring your wrist closer to your mouth and speak softly into the mic, “don’t let me die, okay? I love you”. You don’t hear a reply, but you see flashing lights that spell out “ILY” in morse code. That’s your Guardian Angel, Park Junhee, a spec-ops-turned-private-military who also happens to be your beloved fiancé.

You turn towards the construction site and see some people with hard hats talking among themselves while seemingly waiting for you. “Good evening, ladies and gents. I apologize for being late”, you greet them. “Not at all, Mr. Director. I’d say you’re perfectly on time”, Mrs. Hwang, an architect, says as she shakes your hand. “Can I have a recap of our progress, Mrs. Hwang?”, you ask her. She shows you the site plan and some blueprints and explain to you that they’re planning to build the first 4 floors as soon as the materials arrive and aiming to finish it in 40 days. “Sir, I regret to inform you that the steel beams have been in transport longer than they should’ve been, thus slowing down the progress”, she says, “we have also been seeing protestors gathering here and harassing workers, sir. If I may, Mr. Director, I suggest having security here”. She is correct; while you may not have the cleanest hands and be the kindest businessman around, you certainly don’t want the innocent workers to be harassed or potentially be put in danger. “I’ll contact Nighthaven and see if they can help. Thank you, Mrs. Hwang—anyone else?”, you say.

An engineer asks for your attention, so you turn to him and listen to him. You’re deep into his speech when you hear Junhee warn you, “sir, there’s a man holding a knife running towards your position. Permission to engage, sir.”. “Don’t kill him!”, you yell out, and the people around you look at you in confusion. “Engaging”, Junhee calmly says, and you immediately hear a scream of pain from behind. You and everyone else walk towards the source of the scream and see that there’s a man lying on the ground with a butcher’s knife next to him. To your surprise, the man pulls out a gun and aims it at you, but instead of dying, you hear the man scream again; Junhee has shot him in the arm, forcing him to drop his gun. “Nonlethal, sir, as you asked. Wrap this up quick, please”, Junhee says, and you can hear the worry in her voice.

“I can’t risk losing you, ladies and gents. We’ll meet again at my office tomorrow morning, okay? Scatter, please, and be safe”, you tell Mrs. Hwang and company. Mr. Kang jumps out of the car and opens the door for you, “Mr. Director, get in, please”. “Mr. Kang, call an ambulance and make sure the man gets help, okay?”, you say as you get in the car. Mr. Kang calls his contact as he’s driving to make sure the man can be attended to with no questions asked. “We’re done, Angel—see you at home”, you say to Junhee over the mic. “Yes, sir”, she says.

-

“I’m home”, you say as you open the door and enter the house. You see that Junhee is pacing back and forth nervously while waiting for you. “There you are”, she says, “are you okay, love?”. “Yes, I am. Thank you for covering me, baby; I would’ve died otherwise”, you tell her before coming in for a hug. “You’re much more than a client to me, love”, she says, her voice shaking from the emotions. “I know, baby. I’m still alive because of you, you know that right?”, you say. Junhee was a spec ops personnel and all that, but considering that you’re her fiancé, she feels way more attached to you. “Please don’t die, love. I don’t know what I would do without you”, she says as her eyes turn to a waterfall. “I’m here for you and will continue to be, love. You’re there for me as well, aren’t you, my Guardian Angel?”, you say. “Why did you ask for non-lethal, though? I-I had perfect line of sight, love”, she asks. “We’ve caught enough flaks, baby; we don’t need more”, you say, pressing your lips on her head. “But you could’ve died!”, she screams, “please don’t die, I’m begging you”.

You let Junhee cry to her heart’s content in your arms for a few minutes while offering words of comfort and assuring her that you’re fine. Junhee breaks the hug and tells you to take off your clothes; “I need to make sure you’re not hurt—not even a scratch”, she says. You do as she says and start by taking off your shirt and trousers, revealing the bulletproof vest underneath; “thank you for listening to me and wearing a vest”, she comments with a smile, “continue, please—wait, actually”. She cuts herself off and runs towards the bedroom, leaving you with only a bulletproof vest and boxers on.

She walks out of the bedroom while singing Happy Birthday and holding a cake, and only now do you remember that it is your birthday. “Did you actually forget that today is your birthday, love?”, she asks. “Time flies, love. I was so occupied with work”, you admit. Junhee tells you to make a wish, so you close your eyes and pray for your and Junhee’s safety and prosperity before blowing the candles. “Hurray, happy birthday, love!”, she excitedly says. “Are we eating that, or?”, you ask. “Later”, she says, putting the cake on the dining table. Junhee begins taking off her Agent 47-esque attire and vest and throwing them to the side before approaching you and helping you take off yours.

She pulls you towards the sofa and tells you to sit down, “I want to suck your cock”. Junhee likes sucking your cock to celebrate both your and her birthdays, so this is nothing new or odd to you. Junhee pulls down your boxers and immediately take you in her mouth. “Oh, so good, baby”, you moan, “always so good to me”. Junhee gives you a wink and go down on your cock until her nose touches your pelvis, making her gag slightly in the process. You throw your head back and pet Junhee’s head as you bask in the sensation of her wet mouth and the sounds she’s making.

You feel your cock twitch in her mouth, and you know Junhee feels it too, proven by how she bobs her head faster on your shaft. “Ah, I’m about to cum, love”, you announce to her. Junhee moves up and leave only your tip in her mouth, ready to accept your cum. With a groan, you finally blow your load and flood her mouth with it. Junhee yelps a little bit when your cum hits her throat when she wasn’t ready, but keeps her lips tight around your cock. She closes her lips after pulling away from your cock before swallowing your cum. “Tasty as usual. Thank you, love”. You shake your head weakly, “no, thank you, love”.

Junhee helps you put your boxers on again before sitting next to you on the sofa. “Love, I want to buy firearms tomorrow”, she says. “Plural, baby?”, you ask her. “I want to sell my handgun, get a new handgun and rifle, and buy some ammo for them”, she explains, “you want to come along? We can practice shooting after”. You rub your chin and think about tomorrow’s agenda, “I have a meeting with the people from earlier so you’ll need to be with me first and then I’ll come with you—can I come with you, though? I’d hate to find out that the gun shop people hate me while I’m there with you”. Junhee laughs at you, “so what? C’mon, love, come with me, please”.

-

“Good morning, everyone. I apologize for ending the meeting abruptly last night”, you say as you enter the meeting room and see that everyone has come to the meeting, “is everyone okay, by the way?”. Mrs. Hwang answers for the group, “we’re okay, director. With respect, it was you that he wanted, not us”. “That is correct, Mrs. Hwang. Let’s start now, okay?”, you say as you press the button to roll down the blinds. Obviously, they notice Junhee’s presence in the room as she sticks out like sore pretty thumb, but no one dares ask you about her and jump straight to the conversation.

Since you have let the architects come up with the design, the engineers have little trouble following it since nothing is out of the ordinary or defying the laws of physics. Instead, they offer you ways to shave off some expense by “making the construction process less redundant”. You have no idea what this man is talking about, but since he assures you that it won’t compromise with the building’s quality and strength, you decide to agree. “We have received news saying that the steel beams I mentioned last night will arrive in 2 days, director”, Mrs. Hwang says. “Understood, Mrs. Hwang; please make sure we can continue the construction soon”, you say to her with a nod.

The meeting ends after about 40-something minutes, and everyone leaves together as a group, filing one by one out the door. Junhee drops the cold front and approaches you for a kiss. She takes your hands and put them on her tits, encouraging you to play with them. “Your tits are so soft, baby. Are you sure you’re wearing a bra?”, you comment as you juggle and squeeze them. “I’m wearing your favorite sports bra but no vests”, she says, “love, I’m wet; touch me, please”. You press a button to lock the doors and take off your trousers and boxers, “come to me, baby”.

Junhee pulls her trousers and panties down to give your cock access to her pussy. She jumps into your lap and immediately impale herself on your erect cock, letting out a soft moan in the process. “You-you’re filling me up so well, love—ah, hngh”, she says with heavy breaths. You want to cum so bad, so you thrust up and meet her in the middle, “Fuck, I want to cum for you, baby”. Junhee’s heart is palpitating like crazy, “ah-ah-ah—yes-yes, cum for your fiancé, love—ah, fuck—I’m so close, love”.

You keep thrusting up while Junhee keeps going down as the both of you are chasing your own orgasms. “Love, love—oh, please”, Junhee calls out to you, “I’M CUMMING!”. The way her pussy is squeezing your cock forces you to blow at the same time, and nothing beats the feeling of cumming together with your fiancé. Junhee leans forward for a hug, and the two of you stay silent while catching your breaths. “The—hah, God—the cum will drip down if you stand up”, you say to her. Junhee tells you to lay her on the table and get ready to scoop up the leak. Thankfully the leak isn’t too crazy, and she licks it off your hand. “That’s one pew-pew down, wanna move on to the next?”, you ask her. “Ye-yeah, help me put on my pants, please”.

-

 Mr. Kang drops you off in front of the gun shop, and Junhee leads you into it. “Good afternoon!”, Junhee says to the staffs. “Good afternoon to you as well, Miss Park. Can I help you?”, a female staff says. “Yeah, I’m looking to trade this in for a G43X MOS”, she pulls out her handgun and unloads it before putting it on the counter. The staff picks it up and inspects it, “G19, hey? Anything else?”. “No, that’s it—oh, some 9mm ammo, please”, she says. The staff then leaves you two alone and do whatever he needs to for the trade-in. “I thought you were buying a rifle?”, you ask. Junhee shakes her head, “on second thought, I don’t think I need a new one now. The one we have now still works well—you saw it last night”. You have little clue about firearms, but Junhee knows her stuff, so you trust her judgment on the matter.

The staff comes back outside and invites you two to the range to test her new handgun. The staff hands each of you some headset and safety glasses and asks you to put them on. Junhee then hands the gun to you and asks you to load it yourself, “do not put your finger on the trigger unless you’re ready to shoot—you don’t want to kill us, do you?”. You shake your head and take the gun from her hands. “Aim at that target, love”, she says. You’ve shot a gun before (under Junhee’s supervision, obviously), so you know how to unlock the safety switch and get ready to shoot. “I’m ready”, you say to her. “I know they’ve fired this gun multiple times during production to test it, but technically it’s a virgin; take her cherry like you did mine, love”, she says as she steps away from you.

You steady your aim and start firing one bullet at a time until you’ve shot all 10 of them. “Not bad”, Junhee comments, “you missed one, love—that might hit a bystander, you know?”. You apologize for missing, but she rejects it, “you can apologize by getting better, okay? You need to be able to handle a gun well in case I’m not there to protect you. Come, let’s get out of here”.

Junhee leads you to the front and pays for her new pistol and a box of 9mm ammo. “Sorry for being pushy, but is he your client, Miss Park?”, the staff asks. Junhee looks at you and chuckles, “yeah, something like that. Alright, we’re leaving. See you soon!”. You open and hold the door for your fiancé, earning a cute smile from her; “who would’ve thought a girl this cute was spec ops? Looks can really fool you, huh?”, you think to yourself.

“Love, can we go home, or do you need to go back to the office?”, she asks. “We can go home, yeah. We need to talk”, you say, keeping things vague for Junhee. “Oh, um, okay, love”, she says nervously. She tries asking you what you want to talk about, but you wave her off and tell her that she’ll know soon enough. “Excuse me, sir”, Mr. Kang says, “the news of Miss Park’s work last night has broken out. Personally, I would like to commend her for not killing him”. “It was my fiancé’s wish to shoot him in the leg, Mr. Kang; I was just following orders”, Junhee says. “That is good thinking, sir; the public might dislike you, but not killing him will make you look not as bad”, Mr. Kang says. “What do you think if I pay for his medical expenses?”, you ask your fiancé. “Yeah, I guess we can do that. I’ll call someone and have them take care of it”, she says.

-

“So, what is it you wanted to talk about? I’m not in trouble, am I? Please say no, oppa”, Junhee asks as you enter the bedroom with her. Junhee stopped calling you oppa after you two got engaged and nowadays she usually calls you that when she wants something. You laugh at her as you hold her hands, “no, you’re not in trouble, baby; I just wanted to say that I’ve booked a restaurant this weekend for our anniversary”. Junhee falls forward limply into your arms, “aaaah, you scared meeeee—I thought you were going to scold me or something, aaaaah”. “Ahaha no, of course not. Can I ask you to wear a dress, though?”, you say to her. Junhee huffs: she doesn’t like wearing a dress because she can’t keep her gun on her hip, “ugh, fine—please keep in mind that I’m only doing it for you”. You put on a confused face, “if not for me, then who are you dressing up for?”. “Nobody, oppa, I promise”, she says in a low voice, “if it was up to me, I’d not wear anything when I’m with you and just let you do whatever to me”. “One day, baby, okay?”, you peck her forehead.

“Baby, aren’t you hungry? Want to ask the cook to make you something?”, you ask your fiancé. “I’m hungry for your cum”, she says with a naughty smirk, “but honestly, I am. Can we have fettucine, love?”. You ask her to sit on the bed while you call the cook, “good evening, Miss Ahn. Can we have two fettucine alfredo, please?”. You hang up the phone after getting an answer, “she’s making us some right now. Do you want to do anything while we wait?”. Junhee moves to the center of the bed and rests her head on a pillow, “cuddle, please”.

You join her in bed and Junhee rests her head on your shoulder, the rest of her body hugging you from the side. “I love you”, she says. “I love you too, baby”, you answer. “No, no, you must’ve not heard me; I love you”, she repeats with a pout. “I love you more, baby”, you correct yourself. “There you go—wasn’t so hard, was it?”, she pecks you on the cheek after. You hear Junhee yawn, so you pat her on the back softly and encourage her to get a quick shuteye. She’s private military and all that, but deep inside, she’s just a girl who wants to love and be loved—Junhee doesn’t like being referred to as a girl, by the way; “you turned me into a proper woman, oppa—your woman”, she said after her first time.

-

The buzz from your phone shakes you awake, so you reach over to the bedside table and see the text from Miss Ahn saying that the food is ready. “Junhee, my baby, the food is ready, love”, you poke her in the cheek repeatedly to wake her up. “Hng, carry me, love”, she whines cutely. You carry her on your back and head towards the dining room.

Miss Ahn is waiting for you at the table when you arrive and welcomes you to dinner. “Your dinner is ready, sir and madam”, she says. “Wow, thank you, Miss Ahn. You’re the best!”, Junhee praises Miss Ahn with two thumbs-up and a gleeful smile. Miss Ahn then excuses herself to go home, since it’s almost the end of her working hours.

“Thanks for the meal!”, Junhee exclaims as she picks up some fettucine noodles with a fork and puts it in her mouth, “oh my, delicious as always”. “Apologies, sir”, Miss Ahn returns to the dining room, “your parents sent you a bottle of wine this morning, would you like some as company?”. You see that Junhee also wants some, so you agree to Miss Ahn’s offer and she disappears once again to get the wine and some glasses. “Oooh, a Chateau Margaux”, you say as she brings the bottle to the table. Miss Ahn pours some wine into each of the empty glasses and fills them halfway. “Is that expensive, love?”, Junhee asks. “Yeah, I think so; my mom is a bit of a wine connoisseur, so I’d like to guess that it is”, you tell her. Junhee takes a sip and smacks her lips after, “that’s really good, love”.

You send Miss Ahn away so that she can go home before digging into your fettucine and wine. “This is really good, wow”, you comment. You look at Junhee as you’re chewing and see that she has finished her fettucine. She leans back in her chair and lets out a tiny burp, “oh, sorry, love. It was too fucking good”. “Which one tastes better: the fettucine or my cum?”, you tease her. Junhee’s cheeks are red thanks to you, and she can’t come up with an answer; “you’re not comparing an apple to another apple, though, love; you’re comparing an apple to a banana”, she argues. You shake your head and laugh, “sure, baby, whatever you say”.

-

“It’s Saturday, isn’t it?”, you think to yourself as you’re waking up in the morning. You look around in the dark and see that Junhee is still in dreamland in your arms. You move her arms and legs softly and set them on the bed so that you can get off and stretch your body.

After stretching, you decide to check out Junhee’s gun shelf in the bedroom. You open the shelf and see an unloaded rifle with a suppressor attached to the end of its barrel and two pistols, presumably Glocks, since Junhee likes them so much. When you look down, you see a bunch of magazines lined up tidily and a few boxes of ammunition. You pick up the rifle and rotate it around to inspect it; “feels like a very solid rifle—what is this big ass scope, though?”, you think to yourself. “Looking for something, love?”, Junhee comments as she wakes up. You put the rifle back in its place, “sorry, baby; I was just curious”. “I’m glad that you’re not scared of them”, she comments, “it’s helpful to not be scared of guns, especially when they’re used to protect you”. You turn your attention back to the shelf, “did you modify these things, baby?”.

Junhee gets off the bed and stands next to you. She grabs the rifle from the rack and shows you what part she’s swapped out, such as trigger, charging handle, and bolt carrier group; “obviously you can see the scope and suppressor”, she says. You can hear the enthusiasm in her voice whenever she’s talking about firearms, and you want to keep going for now. “Can you tell me about the pistols? Are these the MOS thingy?”, you ask. “The right one is, but this one isn’t”, she says as she picks up one of them, “this is a Glock G45 with an Omega 9K suppressor and extended mag—Nighthaven gave me this gun as a parting gift”. Junhee puts it back after inspecting it and closes the shelf, “that’s enough gun talk for today, love. Let’s do something else”. “Such as?”, you ask. “Such as giving me your cum before breakfast”, she bites her lip naughtily.

She asks you to sit on the edge of the bed while getting down on both knees in front of you. You pull your boxers down to help her get what she wants, and she strokes your cock immediately; “do you never get tired of having sex, baby?”, you ask. “How can I get tired of sex when my fiancé has such a perfect cock? Not to mention that you were my first and my only”, she says. You keep your eyes on her as she does your favorite thing: tying her hair into a ponytail, even going as far as bending backwards slightly to show off her tits. “God, you look so hot every time you do that”, you comment.

Junhee unbuttons her pajama top and throws it to the side, her tits now free from their restraints. “Love, I know I’ve asked you this before, but what do you think about my tits?”, she says as she holds them with both hands. “If it was up to me, love, I’d carry you in my arms and just suck your tits all day everyday while my cock is deep in your pussy”, you lick your lips at the thought, “would you let me do that?”. Junhee reaches down and starts touching herself, “oppa, I need you so bad—ah, oh—please, oppa”. You pull Junhee onto your lap, your cock pressing against her stomach while your hands are busy fiddling her nipples, “what’s the password, baby?”. “Ah, nghh—please, daddy”, she says with a moan.

You wanted her to say “love”, but “daddy” works just as well if not better. You lift Junhee up by her thighs and impale her pussy with your cock, earning a loud moan from her. “Daddy—ah, fuck, hng—daddy, I love you—ahhh—I love you so much”, Junhee says between noisy moans. “Fuck, baby, you’re so tight”, you praise her as you grit your teeth, “wanna cum for your daddy?”. “Yes, yes, I—AH, FUCK”, Junhee cums as soon as she lets out a scream, and you’re trying your hardest to not bust despite the tight squeeze.

You pull out and ask Junhee to lie on her stomach on the edge of the bed, and unsurprisingly, she obeys right away. You hold your cock and push forward until you feel the warmth of her pussy again—Junhee’s moan is even louder this time, “God, how are you even tighter, baby?”. Junhee screams very loudly at the first contact, seemingly in pain, “tha-that’s my ass, daddy; you-you’re in my ass”. You rub your eyes in disbelief and take a closer look: you are indeed in her ass; “but how did I get in your ass so easily?”, you ask. “I-I���ve been training it, love”, she admits, “I-I wanted to give you my last cherry—ahng, so big, fuck”.

You pull out to process her words, “do you want to say it again?”. Junhee stands up and hugs you, falling limp in your arms like she usually does; “I-I wanted to give you my last cherry, love. That way I’ll be yours entirely”, she says in a weak voice. “But it hurts, no? I don’t want to hurt you, baby”, you say to her. “It did hurt, but it’s only right that I give you my anal cherry”, she says, “please, let me be selfish this one time”. You ask her once again and you’re met with her unwavering determination, so you decide to play along.

Junhee returns to her previous position on the edge of the bed and spreads her cheeks for you, “please, daddy, grant me my wish; I want to be yours enti—FUCK, GENTLY, DADDY”. Your cock is halfway in her ass when she screams it out, “God, baby, you’re so tight”. “Ah-ah-ah—I’m yours, daddy. I’m yours—oh, fuck”, she chants as you fuck her ass at a slow tempo. Once you feel like her rear muscles has relaxed and is stretched enough to accommodate your girth somewhat comfortably, you start fucking her faster. Junhee screams as she feels the increased pace, “YES, YES, I’M YOURS, DADDY”. Her loud chants rile you up even more, and you quietly wish that a household assistant doesn’t happen to be outside the bedroom right now.

The tightness of her ass is different than her pussy’s, and you feel like it’s trying to milk your cum out of your cock. “Baby, I’m about to bust”, you announce to her with a groan. “FUCK, YES, GIVE IT TO ME—GIVE IT TO ME IN THE ASS”, she yells, straining her voice cord—you hope that she won’t lose her voice after this and promise yourself that you’ll give her some water. “AH, FUCK”, you scream out as you release your load in her ass for the first time ever, and you feel splashes on your thighs—Junhee is squirting from anal sex, isn’t that crazy?

You try to pull out, but Junhee tells you to stay inside. “It’s so hot, daddy”, she says, “now I belong to you entirely”. You bend forward and peck her on the nape, “thank you, baby. It was an honor to be your first. I love you, darling”. Junhee then asks you to pull out, citing the pain from the stretch, so you do as she asks and inspect the result of your work. Your cum is dripping out of her gaped asshole that is trying its hardest to return to its original shape. You keep an eye on it until it closes perfectly, and pecks Junhee in the ass, making her gasp in surprise. “Did you like it, daddy?”, she asks. You pull her into a hug before answering, “yes, baby, I liked it a lot. Thank you so much”. “I’m yours now, daddy—like, yours yours, you know?”, Junhee says before pecking you in the cheek. “I know you mean well, but you’re not my property, love”, you say with a smile, “I love you, baby”. “But you get what I mean, right? I’ll do whatever for you, daddy”, she says. You chuckle at her words, “can you eat well and stay healthy for me, love?”. “Aaaaah, you’re not cooperating with meeeeee”, she whines, “you’re so lucky I love you”. You hold her head with both hands, “I know, baby; I’m grateful for you every single day”. Your sweet words make Junhee blush, “I-I’m grateful for you as well, love. I can’t thank you enough for the love you’re showering me with”.

-

It is now 2 hours before you need to leave for dinner. You’ve been busy looking for clothes in the walk-in closet, even going as far as asking Mr. Kang for ideas; “I suggest a white shirt, a three-piece suit in navy-blue, and an orange striped tie, sir”, he said over the phone earlier; his love for those colors is second to none. “I’ll go along with your idea today, Mr. Kang”, you say to yourself. You fetch an orange tie from the shelf and a navy-blue three-piece suit that is tidily kept in cover bag. After putting them on, you grab a box of shoes and head towards the bedroom to check on Junhee.

“Baby”, you knock on the bedroom door, “have you chosen a dress yet?”. Junhee opens the door and walks out, and your jaw drops to the floor right away; she has put on a very fancy white dress and has a matching handbag in her hands. “Dear Lord, you’re so beautiful”, you comment as your eyes roam all over her body from head to toe. “You remember this dress, don’t you?”, she asks—how can you not remember? You gave her that dress as a gift after establishing the first mine under OreQuest Co. last year. You take her hand and peck it, “I can’t wait to get married to you, baby. I love you so much”. “I can’t wait to get married to you, love. I love you more”, she says with a lovely smile, copying your line.

Mr. Kang greets you as you and Junhee walk towards the row of cars, “looking sharp, sir and madam—I see that you’ve agreed to my suggestion, sir”. You shake his hand in appreciation, “I trust your sense of fashion, Mr. Kang. I must say it’s very on-point”. Mr. Kang accepts your thanks with a smile, “may I know which car we’re taking, sir?”. You look around your collection of expensive cars, “can we take the Ghost? That’s armored too, right?”. “It is, sir, just not as thick as the Cadillac”, he says, “please, have a seat”. You open a door for Junhee before getting in yourself, followed by Mr. Kang. “The Sapphire, please, Mr. Kang”, you say to him. Mr. Kang turns on the car and starts driving out of the garage, “certainly, sir”.

During the ride, Junhee pulls out her trusty G45 from her handbag and puts it in the compartment in the center of the seat, “I’ll be unarmed tonight, Mr. Kang; we’re relying on you”. “Understood, madam. Speaking of which, I have an AR-15 in this bag next to me as well”, he says. “Is that a 16-inch, Mr. Kang?”, Junhee asks as she takes a peek. “11-and-a-half, madam; I recently came up with a new build and have been training with it”, Mr. Kang explains. Mr. Kang used to be Junhee’s subordinate during her Nighthaven days, and she was the one who convinced you to hire him as a chauffeur. “You’ve always been the creative one, Mr. Kang—I’ll need a list of the parts you used for it, by the way”, she praises him.

-

Mr. Kang drops you off in front of The Sapphire and opens the door for you with a press of a button. “Director Han”, a staff greets you at the door with a polite bow, “your reservation is ready, sir. Kindly follow me, please”. You hold Junhee’s hand as you follow the staff to your table, secluded from the rest of the visitors. You pull out some money from Junhee’s handbag (since you don’t carry much cash) and hand it to him, “thank you for your help”. “Thank you for the visit, director. Your appetizers will come out soon. Have a good night, sir and madam”, the staff bows again and walks away with a smile. “How did he know that you’re a director, love?”, Junhee asks. You chuckle at her question, “I mean, almost everyone does, whether they hate me or not. Not to mention that The Sapphire’s owners have been good friends with my parents since I was a kid”.

A waiter sets some plates with fancy food on your table while another pours some wine into the glasses. “How long is this dinner, by the way, love?”, Junhee asks as she eyes the food. “9 courses, I think”, you answer her and turn to the waiters and one of them gives you a nod, “yes, 9 courses. Thank you very much, we will be enjoying this”. You lift a glass of wine for a toast, “to us, baby, until the end of time”. Junhee lifts her glass and clinks it with yours, “to us, love, until the end of time”.

-

“Here’s your final course, sir and madam”, the waiter says. “Ah, the last one already?”, you comment, “where has time gone, baby?”. Junhee smiles at you oh-so-warmly, “time flies like a fighter jet when you spend it by talking and laughing with those you love, honey”. Truer words have never been said before and they make you realize how blessed you’ve been throughout your life; “I love you so, so much, baby, but I can’t come up with the words to express myself”, you say with glassy eyes, “I want to get you a gift right now—you know, like a symbol”. “You are my gift, honey—one that never stops giving”, she says with teary eyes as well.

-

You walk out of the restaurant hand-in-hand with Junhee and head towards the car. You open the passenger door and ask Junhee to enter first. You hear a commotion from your left, but initially pay no attention to it and keep minding your business. That is, until the source of the commotion, a man who has a shirt with your face crossed out, appears from around the corner and aims his gun at you. You scream in pain when you feel hot lead hit your left shoulder, and Junhee screams in panic and pulls you into the car. Mr. Kang gets ready to jump out and shoot back, but you tell him no; “don’t, Mr. Kang—just get us out, please”, you say before grunting from the pain.

Mr. Kang plants his foot on the gas and speeds away to get some help for you, and you hear some more shots land on the car. “Love, love”, Junhee calls out to you as tears flow down her cheeks, “stay with me, stay with me, please. Faster, Mr. Kang!”. Your eyelids feel like they weigh a quintal, and you feel powerless to keep them open.

-

You’re lying flat on your back with a bright light shining right in your eyes, and you wonder if you died and is seeing God right now. “God, please protect my fiancé; watch over her and bless her like you’ve blessed me”, you mutter to yourself. “Oppa! Oppa!”, you hear Junhee’s voice coming from God-knows-where, and you can’t help but shed tears. “I’m so sorry for breaking your heart, love. I never meant it to end like this. I love you, baby”, you say to yourself.

A higher power places your soul back into your body as if telling you that this isn’t over yet, and you jolt as if you were electrocuted. You look to your right and see Junhee sitting on a chair next to you: she’s crying her heart out with her hands on her face. “Junhee-yah”, you weakly call out to her, and she gasps in shock before rushing to you. “Love! Love, you’re awake—oh God, thank you—thank you so much”, she says in tears, “I’m so sorry, love. I-I was supposed to protect you. Oh, God, I failed you”. You try to sit, but Junhee holds you down, “no-no-no, please, just lay down. You’re safe here; Mr. Kang is guarding the door”. You wipe her tears with your thumb, “are you okay, baby? Are you hurt?”. Junhee shakes her head as she presses your hand against her cheek, “I-I’m fine, love”. You show her a gentle smile, “then you didn’t fail anyone, love; this is simply an accident”.

You take a good look around the room and the IV drip and heart monitor tell you that you’re at a hospital. “Thank you for bringing me here, love”, you tell Junhee, “I hope no one gave you trouble”. Junhee exhales deeply before answering, “this hospital is secretly owned and run by Nighthaven; they don't ask questions”. You suddenly feel a sharp pain in your shoulder area, and you let out a grunt because of it; “do you know where he hit me?”, you ask her. “Somewhere here”, she points at her own shoulder, under the collarbone, “the bullet is still sitting in your body, by the way—it’s fine, though, you’ll live”.

Junhee sits back down in her chair and texts Mr. Kang and your parents, telling them that you’re alive and well—minus the bullet wound. You chuckle while looking at her, “I was about to ask if you’re hungry, but we literally just had dinner”. Junhee pecks you in the cheek, “I haven’t even thanked you for taking me to dinner—thank you, love”. Since you can’t sit and peck her back, you opt to peck her hand instead, “happy anniversary, baby”. “Happy anniversary, oppa”, she replies with a merry smile.

-

You’re cleared to go home after spending 3 days in the hospital, and you finally see Mr. Kang since the shooting as you’re walking to the car. “Director, pleased to see you again”, he says with a bow, “my apologies for not reacting in time, sir”. You pat him on the back, “it’s fine, Mr. Kang. As long as no one else got hurt, I’m content with it”. He nods and smiles, “one more thing, sir; your secretary received a message from your parents saying that they’re inviting you to dinner on the 21st”. “Dinner, Mr. Kang? Did they forget what just happened?”, you let out an amused chuckle. “The dinner will be at their house, sir, and your fiancé has arranged for Nighthaven to guard the area—she might not be one of them anymore, but she’s still the highly-respected Head of Personnel Development in their eyes”, he explains. “Aaaah, I want to go hoooome”, Junhee whines, “love, please; can we not go home already?”. “You heard the lady, Mr. Kang; let’s go home”, you say to him.

-

Junhee drags you to the bedroom and asks you to sit on the edge of the bed, presumably because she desperately wants your cock after spending a few days without sex. “Are you that horny, baby?”, you ask Junhee, who is seemingly in a rush to strip. “You have no idea”, she says, “I would’ve sucked your cock and have you cum in me that night if it wasn’t for that fucking bastard”. She turns away from you and holds your cock as she lowers herself, “I want it in my ass, daddy—can I have it in my ass, please?”. You both know that your cock and her asshole are dry, but you don’t want to ruin Junhee’s mood, so you let her do what she wants and agree to fuck her ass again.

Hearing your approval, she starts lowering her butt until your tip is at her entrance. Once she manages to get the tip in, you pull her down roughly and fill her ass with your entire shaft. She throws her head back and screams, “ah-ah—daddy, so full—ah-ah, yes”. You then yank her hair and ask her where your cock is; “it-it’s in my ass, daddy—FUCK, YES, PLEASE”, she answers with a scream because you’re getting impatient with the slow pace and thrust up into her ass.

You feel tired after a few minutes, so you pull out and ask her to get on her hands and knees on the bed. Junhee’s arms become limp as you’re fucking her from behind, causing her to drop her torso onto the bed. You spank her multiple times as you’re fucking her ass hard and fast, making Junhee scream both in pain and pleasure. “Daddy, daddy, yes—fuck, yes—do me, daddy”, she chants repeatedly. “I hope you like it rough”, you say to her as you plant your feet on the bed to get a better posture to fuck her.

You finally blow your load in her ass with a groan, but unlike last time, Junhee isn’t squirting. She also doesn’t resist when you pull out, choosing to drop her ass flat onto the bed due to exhaustion. “You were so rough, daddy; I don’t think I’ll be able to walk after this”, she comments with heavy breaths. “I’m so sorry, love. You made me really horny, and I went off the rails”, you apologize as you pat her back gently.

You roll Junhee onto her back and cuddle her, “I know I technically didn’t go anywhere, but I’ve missed you so much, baby”. Junhee steals a peck from your cheek, “I’ve missed you too, love. I’m so glad you’re okay now”. You glance at the clock hanging on the wall and see that you still have a lot of time until bedtime, “love, are we ready to call it a night or do you have other ideas?”. She gathers her might and straddles your thighs, “you haven’t filled my pussy, love; one more round, please? I want you to make me sore”.

Her words arouse you, and you feel your cock hardening again instantly after hearing that you’ll be doing another round. Junhee holds your cock in one hand and starts stroking it, “always so hard for me, aren’t you? I love it”. You close your eyes and enjoy the handjob she’s giving you. That is, until she asks for your attention; “eyes on me, love”, she says with a smile. You look at Junhee in the eyes, and she immediately stuff herself with your cock. “Fuck, the size catches me off guard every single time”, she says before taking the entirety of your cock in her pussy, “oh, fuck, so full again”.

You don’t want to miss out on Junhee’s heavenly soft moans, so you pull her down and keep her in your arms while her hips are busy going up and down your cock at a relaxed tempo. “Moan for me, love; you know how much I love the sound”, you say to her. Junhee nibbles your ear before moaning right into your ears. “Ah-ah—honey, I love you so much”, she says softly into your ears, “everything about you is just perfect, honey—take me, honey, yes”. You want to reply to her with your own words, but your low voice doesn’t sound as sexy as hers, so you decide to do something else. You latch your lips on her neck and start sucking and nibbling, feeling keen on planting hickeys on her pale skin. “Yes, mark me, love—I’ll show them who I belong to”, Junhee eggs you on. With her encouragement, you suck on her neck harder until it’s red.

Rough sex is fun and all, but nothing beats slow romantic sex with very minimal profanity, as you’re able to rejoice in the sensations and show your significant other how much you love them, just like how you and Junhee are doing it right now. “My love, I want to cum with you”, she says softly between moans. “Kiss me, baby”, you say to her as you guide her chin towards you. Junhee plants her lips on yours and starts kissing you lovingly and passionately, adding a bit of tongue wrestling on top of it. Junhee breaks the kiss to deliver some news, “I’m so close, my love. Please, please finish with me”.

Orgasm is finally at the door again after what felt like half an hour, and your cock twitches in Junhee’s pussy. “Yes, love, give it to—OH, GOD”, Junhee cuts herself off and yelps as she reaches her peak. You follow closely behind her and blow your load inside her pussy. Junhee kisses you again as she rides her high, only breaking it after it passes. “I love you so much, honey”, she says. “How much?”, you say with a teasing smile. Junhee straightens her posture and makes a big circle with her hands, “thiiiiis much”. You laugh at her antic, “I love you more, baby”.

There are stray strands of hair all over her face, so you do your best to tidy them up for her. She lies on your body after you’re done, “thank you for everything, love”. “You’re welcome, baby. Thank you”, you reply to her, “you want to let me out, or no?”. “No, let’s just stay like this until tomorrow, that way I’ll be able to ride you first thing in the morning—would you consent to that, by the way?”, she says. You smile at her, “of course; it’s not like you’ll cut my penis off when I’m asleep, is it? What makes you want me to stay inside, though?”.

She plants her hands on your chest and looks at you, “I don’t know if other men’s penis does this, but yours doesn’t shrink; you’re just limp—you’re very big, by the way, if you haven’t noticed already. I’d love to keep your penis in my mouth or vagina all day long if it was up to me”. You laugh at her words, “it feels like you’d do a lot of things if it was up to you”. She slaps your chest playfully before resting on your body again, “I really want to be naked all day and let you do what you want to me, though”. “What about the household assistants, love? You don’t want them to see you run around the house naked, do you?”, you ask. “Oh, you’re right”, she says as the gears in her head turn, “we can give them a day off, no? That way the house will be empty. Please say yes, love”. You smile and shake your head in amusement, “sure, baby. Just tell me when, okay?”.

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge: Unleashing the Power of Muscle

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

In 1962, a new era of muscle cars emerged, radiating brilliance and power. Chrysler led the way with their groundbreaking Max Wedge lineup, introducing the world to the fusion of unitized-body construction and the high-performance ram-tuned dual-carbureted 413 CI engine. Among these legends was the Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge, a remarkable vehicle that holds a significant place in automotive history.

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

The First Super Stock Max Wedge with Manual Transmission According to the esteemed Chrysler Registry and the meticulous documentation by Darrell Davis, this specific Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge holds a groundbreaking distinction—it was the first Super Stock model equipped with a manual transmission. The car’s odometer displays a mere 6,593 miles and has undergone a meticulous restoration process to return it to its original specifications. Notably, the engine has been upgraded, boasting a dyno-proven power output exceeding 500 HP.

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

Unleashing the Power of the 413 CI V-8 Engine The 1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge was powered by the formidable 413 CI V-8 engine. This was the first iteration of Chrysler’s renowned ram induction system, featuring a cross-ram intake manifold meticulously designed to optimize engine efficiency. The engine’s performance was further enhanced by the utilization of cast-iron header-style manifolds, which were rarely preserved but featured in this exceptional vehicle. Dale Reed of California refreshed the engine around 300 miles ago, ensuring its optimal performance. The correct Carter AFB carburetors reside beneath dual black air cleaners, accentuated by carefully placed decals.

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

A Unique Manual Transmission Experience One of the distinctive aspects of this Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge is its manual transmission. Unlike its automatic counterparts, this car delivers a unique driving experience through its floor-mounted shifter, allowing the driver to truly feel the power at their fingertips. Paired with a full aftermarket exhaust equipped with cutouts and the robust 8 ¾ Chrysler differential, this Max Wedge offers an exhilarating ride for those who crave the thrill of the open road.

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

Captivating Style and Authenticity The exterior of this Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge embodies the spirit of the era. Finished in captivating light blue paint, it exudes a timeless charm. The interior features a complementary blue cloth-and-vinyl combination, while the white-and-blue two-tone trim adds an elegant touch. The front and rear bench seats provide comfort, and the radio delete plate pays homage to the car’s performance-focused nature. Notably, it features a knee-knocker S-W column-mounted tachometer and a beautifully presented trio of rubber pedals. The car’s attention to detail is evident throughout, with the inclusion of circa-1962 chrome fonts, single-lens tail lamps, and OEM steel wheels adorned with poverty-type hubcaps.

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

Provenance and Documentation Accompanying this Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge is a wealth of provenance and documentation that adds to its allure. It includes the original OEM IBM punch card and build sheet, which serve as a testament to its authenticity. Additionally, the window sticker provides insight into its original specifications, while the dyno sheet confirms its impressive horsepower rating. Vintage photos capture the car’s early years when it was part of a famous drag car collection, showcasing its illustrious past.

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge

Conclusion The 1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge stands as a testament to the golden age of muscle cars. With its groundbreaking manual transmission configuration, powerful 413 CI V-8 engine, and captivating style, it represents the pinnacle of Mopar’s storied performance heritage. Meticulously restored to its original glory, this Max Wedge allows enthusiasts to experience a bygone era’s raw power and timeless charm.

FAQs: How many miles does the 1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge have? The odometer of the 1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge reads 6,593 miles. Who documented the Chrysler Registry for this particular car? The meticulous documentation of the Chrysler Registry for this car was done by Darrell Davis. Has the engine of the 1962 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge been upgraded? Yes, the engine of this Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge has been upgraded to a dyno-proven 500-plus HP. What is the significance of the 413 CI V-8 engine in this car? The 413 CI V-8 engine in this car was the first to receive Chrysler’s shortened version of ram induction, known as the cross-ram intake. It maximizes engine efficiency and pairs it with rarely preserved cast-iron header-style manifolds. What documentation and provenance come with this Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge? This Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge comes with various documentation, including the OEM IBM punch card, build sheet, window sticker, dyno sheet confirming horsepower rating, and vintage photos of its early years as part of a famous drag car collection.

[theoutcastrogue]

Cold Iron in folklore, fiction, and RPGs

'Gold is for the mistress—silver for the maid! Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.' 'Good!' said the Baron, sitting in his hall, 'But Iron—Cold Iron—is master of them all!' — Rudyard Kipling, “Cold Iron”

Folklore

Drudenmesser, or "witch-knife", an apotropaic folding knife from Germany

The notion that iron (or steel) can ward against evil spirits, witches, fairies, etc is very widespread in folklore. You hang a horseshoe over your threshold to deny entry to evil spirits, you carry an iron tool with you to make sure devils won't assault you, you place a small knife under the baby's crib to ward it from witches, and so on. Iron is apotropaic in many many cultures.

In English, we often come across passages that refer to apotropaic cold iron (or cold steel). "All uncouth, unknown Wights are terrifyed by nothing earthly so much as by cold Iron", says Robert Kirk in 1691, which I believe is the earliest example. "Evil spirits cannot bear the touch of cold steel. Iron, or preferably steel, in any form is a protection", says John Gregorson Campbell in 1901.

Words

So what is cold iron? In this context, it’s just iron. The “cold” part is poetic, especially – but not only – if we’re talking about either blades (or swords, weapons, the force of arms) or manacles and the like. It just sounds more ominous. There are “cold yron chaines” in The Fairie Queene (1596), and a 1638 book of travels tells us that a Georgian general (in the Caucasus) vowed “to make the Turk to eat cold iron”.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang defines “cold iron” as a sword, and dates the term to 1698. From 1725 it appears in Cant dictionaries (could this sense be thieves’ cant, originally? why not, plenty of words and expressions started as underworld slang and then entered the mainstream), and from ~1750 its use becomes much more common.

NGram Viewer diagram for 1600-2019.

In other contexts, cold iron is (surprise!) iron that’s not hot. So let’s talk a bit about metallurgy.

Metals

In nature, we can find only one kind of iron that’s pure enough to work with: meteoritic iron. It has to literally fall from the sky. Barring that very rare occurrence, people have to mine the earth for iron ore, which is not workable as is. To separate the iron from the ore we have to smelt it, and for that we need heat, in the form of hot charcoals. Throwing the ore on the coals won’t do much of anything, it’s not hot enough. But if we enclose the coals in a little tower built of clay, leaving holes for air flow, the temperature rises enough to smelt the ore. That’s called a bloomery.

clay bloomery / medieval bloomery / beating the bloom to get rid of the slag

What comes out of the bloomery is a bloom: a porous, malleable mass of iron (that we need) and slag (byproducts that we don’t need). But now we can get rid of the slag and turn the porous mass to something solid, by hammering the hot bloom over and over. And once the slag is off, by the same process we can give it a desired shape in the forge, reheating it as needed. This is called “working” the iron, hence “wrought iron” objects, i.e. forged.

a blacksmith in his forge, with bellows, fire, and anvil (English woodcut, 1603)

This is the lowest-tech version, possibly going back to ~2000 BCE in Nigeria. If we add bellows, the improved air flow will raise the temperature. So smelting happens faster and more efficiently in the bloomery, and so does heating the iron in the forge, making it easier to work with. And that’s the standard process from the Iron Age all through the middle ages and beyond (although in China they may have skipped this stage and gone straight to the next one).

If we make the bloomery bigger and bigger, with stronger and stronger bellows, we end up with a blast furnace, a construction so efficient that the temperature outright melts the iron, and it’s liquified enough to be poured into a mould and acquire the desired shape when it cools off. This is “cast iron”.

a blast furnace

So in all of this, what’s cold iron? Well, it’s iron that went though the heat and cooled off. (No heat = no iron, all you got is ore.) If it came out of a bloomery, or if it wasn’t cast, it’s by definition worked, hammered, beaten, wrought, and that happened while it was still hot.

Is there such a thing as “cold-wrought” iron? No. In fact, “working cold iron” was a simile for something foolish or pointless. A smith who beats cold iron instead of putting it in the fire shows folly, says a 1694 book on religion, so you too should choose your best tools, piety and good decorum, to educate your children and servants, instead of beating them. When Don Quixote (1605) declares he’ll go knight-erranting again, Sancho Panza tries to dissuade him, but it’s like “preaching in the desert and hammering on cold iron” (a direct translation of martillar en hierro frío).

Minor work can be done on cold iron. A 1710 dictionary of technical terms tells us that a rivetting-hammer is “chiefly used for rivetting or setting straight cold iron, or for crooking of small work; but ’tis seldom used at the forge”. Fully fashioning an object out of cold iron is not a real process – though a 1659 History of the World would claim that in Arabia it’s so hot that “smiths work nails and horseshoes out of cold iron, softened only by the vigorous heat of the sun, and the hard hammering of hands on the anvil”. [I declare myself unqualified to judge the veracity of this statement, let's just say I have doubts.] And there is of course such a thing as “cold wrought-iron”, as in wrought iron after it’s cooled off.

Either way, in the context of pre-20th century English texts which refer to apotropaic “cold iron”, it’s definitely not “cold-wrought”, or meteoritic, or a special alloy of any kind. It’s just iron.

Fiction

The old superstition kept coming up in fantasy fiction. In 1910 Rudyard Kipling wrote the very influential short story “Cold Iron” (in the collection Rewards and Fairies), where he explains invents the details of the fairies’ aversion to iron. They can’t bewitch a child wearing boots, because the boots have nails in the soles. They can’t pass under a doorway guarded by a horseshoe, but they can slip through the backdoor that people neglected to guard. Mortals live “on the near side of Cold Iron”, because there’s iron in every house, while fairies live “on the far side of Cold Iron”, and want nothing to do with it. And changelings brought up by fairies will go back to the world of mortals as soon they touch cold iron for the first time.

In Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword (1954), we read:

“Let me tell you, boy, that you humans, weak and short-lived and unwitting, are nonetheless more strong than elves and trolls, aye, than giants and gods. And that you can touch cold iron is only one reason.”

In Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (1968) the unicorn is imprisoned in an iron cage:

“She turned and turned in her prison, her body shrinking from the touch of the iron bars all around her. No creature of man’s night loves cold iron, and while the unicorn could endure its presence, the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand and her blood to rain.”

Poul Anderson would come back to that idea in Operation Chaos (1971), where the worldbuilding’s premise is that magic and magical creatures have been reintroduced into the modern world, because a scientist “discovered he could degauss the effects of cold iron and release the goetic forces”. And that until then, they had been steadily declining, ever since the Iron Age came along.

There are a million examples, I’m just focusing on those that would have had a more direct influence on roleplaying games. However, I should note that all these say “cold iron” but mean “iron”. Yes, the fey call it cold, but they are a poetic bunch. You can’t expect Robin Goodfellow’s words to be pedestrian, now can you?

RPGs

And from there, fantasy roleplaying systems got the idea that Cold Iron is a special material that fey are vulnerable to. The term had been floating around since the early D&D days, but inconsistently, scattered in random sourcebooks, and not necessarily meaning anything else than iron. In 1st Edition’s Monster Manual (1977) it’s ghasts and quasits who are vulnerable to it, not any fey creature. Devils and/or fiends might dislike iron, powdered cold iron is a component in Magic Circle Against Evil, and “cold-wrought iron” makes a couple of appearances. For example, in AD&D it can strike Fool’s Gold and turn it back to its natural state, revealing the illusion.

Then Changeling: The Dreaming came along and made it a big deal, a fundamental rule, and an anathema to all fae:

Cold iron is the ultimate sign of Banality to changelings. ... Its presence makes changelings ill at ease, and cold iron weapons cause horrible, smoking wounds that rob changelings of Glamour and threaten their very existence.... The best way to think about cold iron is not as a thing, but as a process, a very low-tech process. It must be produced from iron ore over a charcoal fire. The resulting lump of black-gray material can then be forged (hammered) into useful shapes. — Changeling: The Dreaming (2nd Edition, 1997)

So now that we know how iron works, does that description make sense? Well, if we assume that the iron ore is unceremoniously dumped on coals, it does not. You can’t smelt iron like that. If we assume that a bloomery is involved even though it’s not mentioned, then yes, this is broadly speaking how iron’s been made since the Iron Age, and until blast furnaces came into the picture. But the World of Darkness isn’t a pseudo-medieval setting, it’s modern urban fantasy. So the implication here is that “cold iron” is iron made the old way: you can’t buy it in the store, someone has to replicate ye olde process and do the whole thing by hand. Now, this is NOT how the term “cold iron” has been used in real life or fiction thus far, but hey, fantasy games are allowed to invent things.

Regardless, 3.5 borrowed the idea, and for the first time D&D made this a core rule. Now most fey creatures had damage reduction and took less damage from weapons and natural attacks, unless the weapon was made of Cold Iron:

“This iron, mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures, is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties.” — Player’s Handbook (3.5 Edition, 2003)

Pathfinder kept the rule, though 5e did not. And unlike Changeling, this definition left it somewhat ambiguous if we’re talking about a material with special composition (i.e. not iron) or made with a special process (i.e. iron but). The community was divided, threads were locked over this!

So until someone points me to new evidence, I’ll assume that the invention of cold iron as a special material, distinct from plain iron, should be attributed to TTRPGs.

[hanibalistic]

#6F417E | EARTH-42 MILES MORALES.

genre | fluff / reader is gn

synopsis | miles found you fainted in an alleyway one day, except you died two years ago.

word count | 3090

warning | everything i know about e-42 miles morales (and just this spiderverse) is from the movies 

note | tentatively there're 5 parts to this story... thank you for reading :)  

parts | one, two, three, four  

The streets in the morning were less eerie than at night, which you supposed was a given fact. It was like that back on your Earth too. One significant difference you found between your Earth and this Earth was that, while both were crowded, the general architecture of this Earth looked like they were on its last leg. There were more old and rusty gates than reflective and clean glass doors, and most buildings were held together through an abandoned construction process with no safety measures taken. 

Miles told you once that if the buildings hold, they hold. It took you a while to let that mindset sink in. When you realized your overthinking wouldn’t magically strengthen the morale around this place, nor would it collapse one of the dusty-looking buildings as you so feared, you stopped thinking too deeply about it. You would get jumpy occasionally, though, like if a few steel construction poles holding a balcony together start shivering in the wind. He never visibly laughed, but trust that he was always amused at your caution. 

“What about this one?” you asked, holding a sweater before your torso and turning to him. “I like this one. It’s cute!”

Miles peered at you, his hands shoved deep in his jacket pocket where he was safekeeping the money his mother gave him to do clothing shopping with you. The corners of his mouth pulled into a frown immediately. “It looks tacky.”

You mirrored his frown, but yours were defeated rather than mischievous. “You have something mean to say about everything.” 

“For good reason,” he said with a shrug. “You have terrible taste.” 

He wouldn’t be too wrong about that. Fashion was never your forte, but you did wonder if it could be when personal interest and financial budget were no longer an issue. You laughed under your breath; that felt like a faraway dream. Carefully putting the sweater back on the hanger, you made a point to scoff directly at his face. 

“I really don’t see how that’s tacky,” you said. “Is the sweater tacky, or am I?” 

“Oh, I can’t answer that,” he replied with a faux sympathetic smirk. He bent to your eye level and added, “Won’t wanna be mean.”

If he was taunting you, playfully so, it wasn’t successful. One thing you learned about Miles in these past few months of living with him was that he was all bark and no bite. All you have to do is level his stare for just a bit too long for comfort—you squinted your eyes, your nose scrunching as an afterthought, then abruptly stomped a foot forward. He immediately jumped back, but he did it to avoid hitting the tip of your nose with his, not because you successfully scared him. 

His eye twitched in dismay when you smiled triumphantly before turning around and running out of the store, dropping a quiet trail of snickers through your lips. Miles faintly clicked his tongue into a grin, which he had to physically rub off his face. After spending these months with you, save for the paranoia-inducing glitches you have been doing occasionally, he has mostly settled with your presence being a constant.

There was a spot for you in his twin-sized bed, at the dining table in the living room, and even on the chores list! Your prolonged stay was not anticipated, nor was your infiltration into his life to such an intimate degree. At some point, Miles completely tore his walls down to let his heart run astray, and the first place it ran to was you. The only issue now was whether you returned his feelings, and that was a question he couldn't even begin to pick apart. 

"It's so nice to put a face to a name.” Seconds after he left the store, he could recognize a voice. "Oh, yes. Miles talks about you all–" 

"Gwen!" 

Realization hit him with the hallucinated impact of a train entering a pitch-black tunnel. He bolted out to the street where you and his partner in crime (literally) stood, his arms stretched out so he could cover your ears just before Gwen could finish her sentence. You looked up just as your shoulders were hunched at the icy feel of his hands, and you saw Miles utter something through gritted teeth at the bemused girl you just met.

“You’re not funny!”

“Thank you, Miles. I try my best,” Gwen retorted with a satisfied smirk, then her gaze bounced down to you, and she scoffed in disbelief. “You’re right, though. They do look exactly alike. It’s uncanny.”

“They’re the same person,” he clarified, “just from a different Earth.”

“I know,” Gwen shrugged, “but you’d think they would at least have a different style.”

“They’re wearing my clothes. How would you know?”

“They’re wearing your clothes?”

Miles pursed his lips as he let go of your ears, subconsciously rubbing them through a brief caress before his arms fell to his sides. You widened your eyes in surprise when the cold Brooklyn air and the chattery street returned to your senses; it didn’t occur to you how much pressure he applied to muffle your ears until sounds came back to you. Shifting his weight and heaving a dramatic exhale, Miles let his friend know how little bullshit he was willing to take from her this day, especially when it came to jokingly expose his feelings for you. Gwen’s smirk stayed for a moment longer before she narrowed her eyes and gave a knowing nod; it was all for good fun. She understood the implication of someone like Miles falling in love.

“What are you guys up to?” Gwen asked, changing the subject. 

“We’re buying clothes,” you replied, clarifying with an indignant huff. “Or we would be if he wasn’t vetoing everything I suggest.”

“Their taste is awful,” Miles retorted without looking at you. He was speaking to Gwen. 

“A tacky shirt means I won’t have to take from your closet anymore,” you said, exasperated. You threw your arms up to smack his face with the overly long sweater sleeves before rolling them back up to your wrists, where you folded the hems twice to keep them from sliding over your hands. “Look at your clothes! They’re big on you, and they’re big on me!” 

Gwen pulled a face in agreement. “You do like oversized clothes, Miles.” 

“Thanks for the unsolicited input,” Miles smiled, “much appreciated.” 

The tension zapping between their fake smile and glaring stare was palpable. To your dramatic lenses, at least. You switched between the two of them, your eyes darting back and forth as your mind raced to find some kind of a conclusion to their relationship. If Miles was in love with the previous version of yourself, and they have since died, then the next possible candidate would likely be Gwen depending on how closely related they were. Or perhaps you were wrong all along! Miles told the truth when he said he was only good friends with ‘you’ because his heart belonged to this girl across from you!

“What are you two?” you asked, promptly breaking their eye contact.

“Oh? We–uhh,” she awkwardly tugged a piece of hair behind her ear and glanced at Miles, “we work together?”

Miles frowned at Gwen for a split second before he nodded. “We work together.”

“Colleagues!” You crossed your arms and stared off into the distance. You ignored Miles when he began asking questions about what you were doing. “Colleagues… there is much to discuss… yes.”

“What?” He waved his hand in front of your face. “What are you yapping about?” 

“I think someone is getting the wrong idea about us,” Gwen said, failing to hold back a chuckle. She watched Miles roll his eyes as if you’ve always gotten the wrong idea about everything and smiled faintly to herself; she had not seen him this expressive in a while. Having a paralyzed face was his thing ever since grief took over. Looking away, she directed the conversation to you instead. “Hey, how is the glitching treating you?

You clapped your hands suddenly and tilted your head, ignoring the way Miles jumped in disbelief that you responded to Gwen and not him. You had no idea she knew of your glitching, but if Miles trusted her enough to let her on your identity, she must be someone you could count on. Nodding, you looked down at your hands and grimaced. “They’ve slowed down, thankfully. I don’t like the feeling of it.”

There were no words to describe how the glitching felt because you simply were not for a moment. It was the act of your existence being pulled apart manifested into a colorful and pixelated view for a third-party observer. The dimensional sight of it tricked people into thinking there was an experience to undergo, but there wasn’t, technically. You were glitched out of existence and then glitched back into reality. Your body and soul were pulled apart at the seams, separated into atoms and molecules of nothingness, and your mind wasn’t fast enough to catch up with its erasure that for a split second, you understood your oblivion before being forcefully put back on your feet. 

You were thrown into uncontrollable sobs the first few times you glitched. The process was all but a mere few seconds, but the aftermath was Miles staying up all those nights until you fell asleep first, holding his breath whenever you stirred in your sleep, and wishing he was capable enough to stop your face from getting stained by tears. You have mostly gotten used to the feeling, but that did not eliminate the grotesque urge to barf every time you glitched.

“Hmm…” Gwen rubbed her chin in thought at your reaction. She has been helping with figuring out what to do to stop you from glitching entirely, but the urgency of it all greatly stumped her thinking process. She worked well under pressure, not one of her friend’s many paranoid rambles about you dying. “The multiverse is difficult to figure out, but I think I have a few ideas I’d like to try.”

Miles turned to her with anticipation. “You have something?”

“It’s not a definitive something,” Gwen said as she stepped away from his prying eyes. “It’s more of a hypothesis.” 

“We can test it out,” he urged, eyes glimmering unfamiliarly. “Having something is better than nothing.”

“My problem is more about [Name] being the only person who can prove that what we made worked,” she said with a shake of her head. “I will not have them wear something that might kill them.”

There was a downward shift in the air as the Brooklyn cold froze over. Your eyes darted about at the drop of tension. The change in Gwen’s voice and how Miles’s feet shuffled so he didn’t have to maintain an awkward standing position were not lost on you. There was a shared sorrow that neither has opened up to you about. With Gwen avertinig her eyes and the gentle drop in her confidence, you couldn't have been mistaken that she also knew you well before you died. Deducing from her last sentence, these two might be why you met your end. 

“We should give it a try anyway,” Miles muttered. “If it works, it’ll really help them.”

You halted the inward debate on whether you should give a say in their conversation. You couldn’t begin to understand the science they would have to figure out to stop your paranormal glitching, even if they decided to discuss the plan with you. It still surprised you that Miles has the smarts good enough to be on his way to prestigious universities. He has been so regular—he went to school, lazed about the chores, and was afraid of his mother for reasons you now understand. Either way, your best bet was to trust that these two only had your best interest in mind. 

You smiled at Gwen and gave her two encouraging thumbs-ups when she glanced at you with what you could consider millennia of uncertainty. Her stoic brows relaxed as nostalgia packed her body into itself upon getting hit in the face, once again, with your familiar features. Two years of unresolved grief and self-blame, two years of longing for a friend, and everything dissolving into one innocent smile and two thumbs-up. Miles did not overstate his whiplash when he saw you because she was feeling it too. 

“I’ll gather everything I have and bring them over tonight,” Gwen said. “I have some stuff to do, so I’m gonna go. I’ll see you tonight, Miles, and, uh–“ she waved, for a farewell that felt long overdue–“goodbye, [Name].”

Her soft features remained in your head as her back faded into the crowd. The noticeable sorrow in her eyes whenever she looked at you further reinforced your assumption that you two, at least, used to be friends. A sense of pride for yourself from this Earth blossomed deeply in your chest, and you felt giddy knowing that you could maintain a genuine friendship with Gwen. But, more than that, you admired how her face glowed even under the chillingly dark sky and how her voice spoke like the texture of crumbled silk being smoothed over with a kind hand. Her delicate features plagued your head because you thought she was pretty. 

“I like her,” you said with a small smile playing on your lips. 

“I do, too,” Miles hummed in acknowledgment. He reached down to grab your hand so you wouldn’t get a chance to run off again, and you let him. “Not in the way you think I do, though.”

Question marks popped into the crease of your forehead as you looked up at him, acting incredulous now that you found out your self-curated romantic fantasy based off of one simple interaction between two people whose relationship you have no detail on read like an open book to him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he retorted as he raised your intertwined hands to point a finger at you. “You need to stop acting a fool.”

You squeezed his hand extra tight and huffed in dissatisfaction when he was barely affected by your abysmal strength. Taking a deep breath, you forced an embarrassing, wise chuckle and said, “Love is supposed to make you do stupid things.”

“Tell me when the love is there.”

“Ugh,” you groaned and pursed your lips to silence yourself. Observing passersby as a distraction, you managed to keep quiet for a few stores before bashfully inching closer to Miles, who sighed knowingly. “You really don’t have any feelings for her? Not even a little?” 

“No.”

“Ugh!” Your groan was less annoyed this time. “What a waste! I don’t understand!”

“You’re really hell-bent on this,” he mentioned as his legs stopped. He turned his body to you with wilful ignorance that he was forcing both of you to block everyone from walking down the middle of the street. He raised a brow, questioning. “I don’t like her like that. What don’t you understand?”

You felt a rare intimidation through his gaze, so you looked toward the direction Gwen left, chasing the image of a girl you tried not to feel envious of. Miles watched your eyes soften, but it was not the cause of relaxation but rather deep thinking that you forgot a world was happening around you. He waited patiently for you to return to him, anticipating your words. He always anticipated what you have to say, about anything, to the point it was foolish that he would wait for you to point out to him that an apple was red and a banana was yellow. 

“I don’t know,” you whispered loud enough for him to hear. “She’s so pretty.”

The thought that it never crossed his mind might baffle you, but it never did. Gwen was pretty, but to Miles, that was an undeniable fact rather than something sentimental. Or, at least, it used to be. The fact that she was pretty immediately became a jagged blade that threatened to cut your perception of his feelings for you after what you said. He was less than fond of it, and, unfortunately, he also has no idea how to keep you from being cut with it. 

It was a shame that you couldn’t see him the way he saw and knew himself. 

How no matter the tap water he splashed on his face and the flower-scented soap he applied on his hands, the only thing to truly rinse him of the grotesque, metallic stain of a purple mask was the double weight on his bed. How taking his prowler suit off could never rid him of the criminal identity the same way he could forget about it when he sat before the television folding laundry with you. How the heavy stomps of his feet treading down a path of crime and the terrified breathing of almost having his life taken from him could be so easily drowned out by the seamless way his voice weaves into the sound of your laugher as if you two were made for each other. 

You didn’t know the way he ached to sink himself into your presence, to relearn the world through your eyes and let you remind him that an apple was red and a banana was yellow, and how he would carve your face into his own so he would never forget you after you leave this Earth.

Miles’s heart was rebirth into the shape of yours, and you thought Gwen was pretty.

“There is nothing to it,” he said, clutching your hand to never let go. “She’s pretty. It’s empty.”

You slowly turned away from the street to look at him and smiled at his serious reaction. The dim sky tore open to let the sun kiss you, a tenderness he yearned to give you but couldn’t muster up the genuine courage to, so he only stared at you with endearment written all over his face in a language you haven’t learned to read. 

“Come on, let’s go back to get the sweater you want,” he muttered.

“You said it was tacky.” You followed behind closely as he dragged you by the hand.

“Exactly,” he mused, “you two are a perfect fit.”

You squeezed his hand in retaliation, but all he could feel was how perfectly they fit together. Maybe even better than you and that sweater.