a Stark realization.

After leaving that meeting with Tony Stark, I can't afford to rest on my laurels.

I can't afford to just sit back and relax, thinking I've accomplished everything.

There's no time for complacency. Progress waits for no one.

There is no rest for the wicked, and that's very true for my Emberfall residents as well.

It's like a mantra for them, reminding everyone that they can't afford to slow down.

I decided to swing by Maya Hanson's lab to check on her progress with the Extremis synthesis. As I was heading there, my phone buzzed, alerting me to something important.

And boy, oh boy, when I saw what it was, I couldn't help but burst into laughter. It was one of those moments that just tickled my funny bone.

You see, after parting ways with Tony, I went back home and worked with Ordis on designing the Antarctica base and smoothing things out.

And today Tony seems to have finally been able to get a return on my name and face and had taken it upon himself to dig up every little bit of information about me and my company. Hence the buzz on my phone.

Well, let me tell you, his attempt—and I emphasized the word "attempt"—to hack into our company server was nothing short of hilarious.

We've got this server that's purely for show, with no real substance to it. But apparently, it had its own kind of fortification; I'd already seen Tony's hacking attempt a light year away and was ready to troll his butt a billion times over.

When Tony tried to breach it, all he got was a virtual dump truckload of clutter and terabytes of photoshopped pictures of himself holding a clothes iron.

Also, my personal favorites are those sneaky, well-disguised little zip bombs that would definitely ruin his day.

and I am sure he will be beyond livid and will have a nuclear meltdown of frustration.

A frustrated Tony is like chicken soup for the soul. You know, for so long, cyberspace was his playground. No firewall, encryption, or any kind of fortification could ever stand in his way.

Cyberspace was a canvas, and he was Pollock.

But today that's not the case; after this little stunt, he will be left cleaning up the damage for a couple of weeks.

'We do a little trolling' I thought to myself with a chuckle as I watched what was about to happen.

.

.

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TONY STARK POV:

After that devilish gift-bearer skedaddled out of my house, I couldn't resist tinkering with the "grace" he bestowed upon me.

The technology behind it is something else. It's strikingly similar to my arc reactor in principle but with a boatload of improvements.

Some of them were pretty obvious, while others were so puzzlingly brilliant that it felt like they were crafted by a techno-psychic.

The Core's element itself is no less enigmatic than the arc reactor's design; its energy resonates so perfectly with the design of the arc reactor. The synergy between them indicates that it's like they were made to marry each other.

I spent the entire following morning diving deep into the mind-blowing engineering of this arc reactor. It completely overshadowed any plans I had for the next decade.

Some of the tech trees required to produce such a thing haven't even sprouted in my imagination yet.

This whole experience really set my engineering bone ablaze, as nothing has in a long time. I was lost in thought, running diagnostics, crunching numbers, and just geeking out over it all.

And that's when J.A.R.V.I.S. interrupted my techno-trance with some good news.

"Sir, it appears I've got a breakthrough on our visitor from yesterday. Somehow, my probe nodes were momentarily blinded, but I managed to start receiving a flood of data. I've sent it all to your Halo interface," J.A.R.V.I.S. informed me.

"Really? Amazing! Let me see everything!" I exclaimed eagerly.

"What do we have here?" I hummed to myself, fingers dancing across the keyboard as I implemented protocols to seep through both his past and present.

"Huh, his name is actually Sol Brightburn. Ah, that explains it. He did change his name some years ago," I mused aloud, my excitement growing with every piece of information I uncovered.

"A foster kid with a tragic story … a brilliant mind and an MIT graduate … And Emberfall? Well, this man clearly has a thing for fire and flames." I chuckled, satisfied that I had finally narrowed down his identity.

"Now, Emberfall is a multi-billion-dollar company, yet it's never crossed my radar. He wasn't kidding about staying under the radar; I may learn a thing or two from him, but it's not my style," I quipped.

From the publicly available information on his corporation, it seems Emberfall was founded five years ago by some dude from San Francisco. Unfortunately, he passed away, and his mother sold his stake to Sol's think tank. They merged and formed Emberfall Corp. They seem to be mostly a systems corporation that has been granted numerous military contracts. Not to mention their breakthroughs in battery chemistry and computer chip design. They seem to be the new prodigy in town.

and let's not forget about their golden goose security systems. which I will happily enjoy breaking.

"Ha ha ha!" I cackled like a maniac, knowing I would enjoy every second of what I was about to do.

"J.A.R.V.I.S., it's time to put Troy's advanced protocol into action. Initiate delta nods and begin systematically probing their server infrastructure for any lurking security vulnerabilities," I commanded with a wide grin while sipping my morning juice.

"Yes, sir. Executing all protocols Firewall successfully breached, and we're primed for data extraction," J.A.R.V.I.S. promptly informed me.

"Excellent! Channel and divert all available data resources to my central repository. Extract all those beta-encoded data clusters, making sure to cleverly bypass their low-layer firewalls and intrusion detection systems," I instructed, feeling a surge of excitement coursing through me to have a One on my yesterday's guest.

"All done, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. chirped with an equally smug tone as mine.

"Good. Now, let's kickstart the compilation and decryption processes," I commanded, knowing that I had just secured a treasure trove of juicy petabytes of data.

And just like that, all hell broke loose.

"Sir, it seems there is a problem," J.A.R.V.I.S. said with a tone full of dread.

"What is it, J.A.R.V.I.S.?" I asked with a frown.

"It seems that the files we extracted were full of trojan horse programs that my firewall can't guard against; all my control nodes are being looped and corrupted, and I am unable to stop the extraction process," he said.

"It can't be that bad?" I asked nonchalantly.

"The extracted files are full of Zip and Fork bombs, which created an opening for more arbitrary code execution malware that is flooding my neural net with data that seems to only be clutter and gibberish, petabytes of it; also, it seems that all my nodes are looped and should be manually untangled; it will take days if not months, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. explained.

And just when I thought things couldn't get worse, every single screen around me, from the monitors to the halo interfaces, suddenly displayed images of me holding a clothes iron.

"Well, well, well, look who's in a pickle now," the mischievous voice of Brightburn echoed through the speakers, accompanied by uproarious laughter.

"Sir, it seems we've stumbled upon an elaborate prank," J.A.R.V.I.S. explained, his voice filled with frustration.

I clenched my fists, feeling a mixture of anger and helplessness about the situation I am in right now.

Despite the frustration bubbling within me, I couldn't help but crack a smile. My intellect hadn't been challenged like this in ages, and as frustrating as it was, there was a part of me that couldn't help but relish in the thrill of the game.

This entire debacle got me thinking back to everything Brightburn had told me yesterday.

It was a harsh wake-up call, revealing just how much I had yet to learn about my own craft.

Also, J.A.R.I.V.S., the most advanced AI on the planet, or so I thought, has been treated like some basic, run-of-the-mill, rudimentary software.

Indeed, life often presents us with unforeseen challenges and circumstances that require adaptability and resilience. Sometimes, fighting against the current only exhausts our energy and hinders our progress.

Riding the current doesn't mean giving up or being passive; it means finding the balance between taking control and acceptance. It's about being flexible, open-minded, and willing to explore alternative paths.

In doing so, we may discover new strengths within ourselves and encounter experiences and people that enrich our journey, and find unexpected parts of ourselves in the midst of uncertainty.

this may be another cave moment for me, and I can come out of it stronger and wiser.

'My pride can take the backseat for now; it's time for me to go back to school' I thought to myself.

but first, I need to untangle this mess I put myself in.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.. keep all my surveillance network far away from Emberfall or anything that has to do with Brightburn," I said with a tone full of resignation.

"Yes, sir"

"sigh" I started typing to fix every neural block that was damaged in J.A.R.V.I.S.'s system which from what I can see, is all of them.