#do gps antennas go bad

[canonisdead]

Tinky Winky with his electric spear: I know you killed my friend with a rock Guardian.

Guardian, thinking: *play dumb*

Guardian: Who’s Guardian? 

Guardian, thinking: *Not that dumb!*

-

Tinky Winky: Welcome to Fucking Applebees, do you want apples or bees?

Guardian: Bees?

Tinky Winky: HE HAS SELECTED THE BEES!

Guardian: Wait-

*Po approaches, shaking a jar of bees menacingly*

-

Laa-Laa: My therapist started crying mid-session.

Dipsy: I think that means you win!

-

Laa-Laa: *gasps horrified and rips her wanted poster off a wall* Oh no….nononono, this is bad. This is very very bad. This is REALLY bad!

Laa-Laa: They just can’t get my antenna right! 

Tinky Winky: Does that really matter? 

Laa-Laa: Well that’s easy for you to say! *gestures to Tinky Winky’s wanted poster* You look amazing!

-

Finn: sapnu puaS.

Miles: What??

Richard: What language is that.

Finn: Turn your phone 180 degrees.

*Finn was removed from the groupchat*

-

Blinky: Do you know that we are made out of atoms? And atoms never touch each other. So in my defense, Papa. I did not punch Gary.

-

Guardian: Wait, you're gonna lie to people?

Lenny, mostly joking: It's not lying when you're in charge, Snowball. It's politics.

-

Blinky: I’m going out

Gary: Okay, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do

Blinky: Like what, get a boyfriend?

-

Miles: I’m telling you, if you want boys to respect you, you have to show them that you’re serious. Blow something up. Shoot someone. Nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence.

Laa-Laa:

-

Anne: Hey, do you know the password to Dutch’s computer?

Finn: Fuck you, Anne.

Anne: Hey!!

Finn: No, you misunderstood, the password is "fuckyouAnne".

Anne: Oh, no numbers? Not very safe.

-

Dutch: What's worse than a heartbreak?

Finn: Stepping on a fox’s tail and not being able to explain that you're sorry.

-

Dipsy: Yesterday, I overheard Baa saying "Are you sure this is a good idea?" and Duggle Dee replying "Trust me." I have never moved from one room to another so quickly in my entire life.

-

Lenny: *master chef* 

Cave: *knows a few recipes* 

Blinky: *can follow instructions on a box* 

Yeti: *made toast once* 

Arrow: *banned from the kitchen*

-

Lenny, pointing to the wall: What color is this?

Finn: Gray?

Dutch: Gray.

Lenny, turning to Richard: Now tell them what color you think it is.

Richard: Dark white.

-

Miles: Why is Richie making me do the dishes again? You haven’t washed them in a week, Lenny!

Lenny, currently has a broken arm: It’s because I’m Richard’s favorite.

Miles: I hate you.

-

Ping: My mom died when I was little so whenever someone jokes about fucking my dad I’ll pretend to be really sincere and say some shit like “Glad to see he’s moving on, my mom’s death hit him pretty hard.” Then watch them absolutely fumble trying to figure out a response to that statement.

Ping: Update, he got a new partner I can no longer make the joke.

-

Umby Pumby: Whoops

Mi-Mi: Whoops? Whoops? This is not a “whoops” situation. We are far past whoops. “Whoops” is a distant speck in the rear view mirror. We are solidly in “oh fuck” territory, and I expect you to act like it.

-

Daa-Daa: How do you tell someone that you wanna have sex with them in a polite way?

Ru-Ru: Excuse me Sir. Would you give me the honors of indulging in sexual activities with you?

Baa: What the fuck is wrong with you two?

-

Nin: Shh, here comes Po! 

Duggle Dee: Quick, Baa, start talking about boring nerd stuff! 

Baa: You know, nerd culture is mainstream now, so when you use the word “nerd” derogatorily, it means you’re the one that’s out of the zeitgeist. 

Duggle Dee: Yes, that’s perfect. Just like that.

-

Baa: I typed "bitch" into my GPS and guess what? I'm in your driveway. 

Mi-Mi, struggling to not laugh: 

Baa: Vroom vroom, come out already.

[marcmarcmomarc]

Wings Around the Globe Rally

Leg 6

AANG: You are looking live at Melbourne Airport.

(Gabriel eyes the leaderboard. Marinette’s plaque blinks at the top.)

MARINETTE: Yep. First place. Not bad for a baker girl.

(As she leaves, Gabriel adresses Nathalie and Cash.)

GABRIEL: Now, listen up. It’s time to make yourselves useful.

Starting line: Melbourne Airport in Melbourne, Australia

Starting positions:

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Gabriel Agreste

Nathalie Sancoeur

Cash

Alya Césaire

Sabrina Raincomprix

Kagami Tsurugi

Rose Lavillant

Nino Lahiffe

Chloé Bourgeois

Kim Chiến Lê-Ature

Nathaniel Kurtzberg

Mylène Haprèle

Juleka Couffaine

Ivan Bruel

Max Kanté

Alix Kubdel

Marc Anciel

Ondine

(The racers soar over people canoeing in Port Phillip Bay.)

LEG 6: AUSTRALIA > ANTARCTICA

4,583 km

TOPH (V.O.): This is our sixth and shortest leg. These racers are lucky to have dressed warm, because they’re going to the ice hole of the Earth, Antarctica.

———————————————————————————

(From above, Nathalie and Cash shadow Marinette. With a smirk, Cash dives and swoops in behind Marinette, knocking off her GPS antenna.)

MARINETTE: Ah! (GASPS)

MARINETTE: My antenna!

(The antenna falls into the ocean and sinks.)

MARINETTE: No. No, no, no! What am I gonna do?!

(Marinette circles the splash and flies off-course.)

MARINETTE: (message breaking) Hawaii, are you there? Do you read? I am low on fuel.

(An alarm goes off. Marinette sees her flashing fuel gauge, which nears empty.)

MARINETTE: Oh, no! Oh, boy.

(She looks around for any sign of dry land. Nothing but vast ocean as far as the eye can see. Suddenly, a jet appears behind her, piloted by Adora.)

MARINETTE: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

ADORA: Unknown rider, unknown rider. You have entered restricted airspace. Why haven’t you responded to radio contact?

MARINETTE: Somebody cut off my antenna.

ADORA: Identify yourself.

MARINETTE: I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

ADORA: Roger that. Bogey has been identified as Dupain-Cheng Seven.

MARINETTE: I’m running on vapours. I need to land.

(Another jet arrives, piloted by Catra.)

CATRA: What are you doing out here with an empty tank?

MARINETTE: Well, I thought I’d refuel in Hawaii, but...

ADORA: Hawaii is 375 miles southwest of here.

MARINETTE: What?

CATRA: Listen, Dupain-Cheng. You’d better follow us to the boat. No bingo fields around here.

MARINETTE: “Bingo fields?”

CATRA: Places to land.

MARINETTE: “The boat?”

CATRA: The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

(Marinette and the jet pilots arrive at the ship.)

ADORA: Bow, this is Adora, checking in as frag plus one. Check.

BOW: Two. Go ahead, Adora.

ADORA: Bogey is civilian and needs emergency fuel.

BOW: Copy that.

GLIMMER: (OVER P.A.) Princess Alliance, rig the barricade for the incoming civilian. Repeat, rig the barricade for the incoming civilian.

HORDAK: You heard her, ladies! Rig the barricade! Chop, chop!

ADORA: (to Marinette) Let’s line you up for the barricade. All you have to do is throttle on back and call the ball, and hopefully end up in the spaghetti.

MARINETTE: What? Wait, no, wait! Wait a second! Um, uh, guys, I’m not sure I can do this.

CATRA: I don’t see how you have a choice.

MARINETTE: Okay. But that runway is moving.

CATRA: We’ll set you up on the glide path.

MARINETTE: Runways are not supposed to move. Okay. I’m okay. I’m going to be fine.

ADORA: Take it easy.

MARINETTE: Moving runway, moving runway. There it is. Here we go.

ADORA: Throttle on back.

MARINETTE: Maybe if I just came around again.

ADORA: Level your wings.

CATRA: Easy with it.

HORDAK: Cut! Cut!

MARINETTE: Stop!

(Marinette comes in too fast. She heads straight for a net they had set up. Her rear wheel makes contact with the arresting wire, which stretches like a sling shot and it immediately stops her before she hits the barrier.)

(The Princess Alliance cheers as Marinette looks around at them and smiles.)

HORDAK: We’ve got you, Dupain-Cheng.

(She is escorted below deck.)

ADORA: Come on, let’s get you fixed up, refuelled and back in the race. You are way behind.

MARINETTE: Thanks. You saved me out there.

———————————————————————————-

Destination: Williams Field at McMurdo Station in Antarctica

Finishing positions:

Gabriel Agreste

Nathalie Sancoeur

Cash

Alya Césaire

Nino Lahiffe

Chloé Bourgeois

Sabrina Raincomprix

Alix Kubdel

Mylène Haprèle

Rose Lavillant

Juleka Couffaine

Ivan Bruel

Kim Chiến Lê-Ature

Max Kanté

Nathaniel Kurtzberg

Kagami Tsurugi

Marc Anciel

Ondine

DNF:

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

———————————————————————————-

(After getting her plane fixed and taking off from the Eisenhower, Marinette tries to navigate through pouring rain from a major thunderstorm and the monstrous swell of waves on the Southern Ocean. Her wheel hits the surface and sends her spiraling out of control. She tries to climb a giant breaker and barrels through the crest, but suffers engine failure.)

MARINETTE: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! I’m going down! 18 degrees north, six minutes, 119…!

(She hurdles into the ocean, but forces herself back up.)

(The waves continue to thrash and force her underwater, but each time, she fights her way to the surface. Her plane battered and bruised, she eventually sinks to the bottom.)

(Later, rescue staff dives into the water with a net and airlifts Marinette to Antarctica, dropping her off on McMurdo Station’s runway surrounded by her family and friends.)

ALYA: Marinette!

NINO: Is she okay?

SABINE: Quick! Get her to the hospital!

Leg 5

Plane repair

Back to index

[captainconvey]

Biden regime, pentagon, and fake media has lied about china spy balloons.

Suspicious Cat Knows China Spy Balloons are a Biden Regime distraction to hide the fact the biden regime blew up the Nord pipeline, biden secret docs found everywhere and inflation going through the roof.

U.S. house of representatives is investigating biden and hunter biden.

A mystery object shot down by U.S. fighter jets amid ongoing hysteria sparked by a Chinese spy balloon was a $12 inflatable launched by a hobby group in Illinois.

A mystery object shot down by U.S. fighter jets amid ongoing hysteria sparked by a Chinese spy balloon may have been a $12 inflatable launched by a hobby group in Illinois.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) reported one of its balloons 'missing in action' around the same location - and at the time time - a U.S. Air Force jet downed an unidentified object near Alaska using a $400,000 Sidewinder missile.

NIBBB said its 'K9YO' balloon last reported its location shortly before 1am GMT on Saturday, February 11 (8pm EST on February 10), near the coast of southwest Alaska.

The Bottlecap balloon brigade had already gone around the earth 6 times before the military lied and actually shot down a balloon launched from northern illinois on Feb 11, 2023.

Pentagon used a $400,000.00 missile to shoot down a https://nibbb.org/ Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade - balloon.

Pico Ballooning is a part of Amateur Radio also known as Ham Radio or Hams. We’re licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowing us to communicate to other Hams throughout the World.

Pico meaning small, we send a small transmitter, with GPS tracking and antenna on a balloon filled with Hydrogen, rising to 47,000 feet, and travelling with the speed of the Jetstream.

As we travel, our GPS is able to locate our current location, and other information is gathered depending on what chips we have on our transmitter while using other programs to gather other inflight information.

Other Hams can receive our signal and are reported on a computer using WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporting) from anywhere through the internet. Our total package of transmitter, antenna, and balloon weigh less than an ounce, that is really small.

Here is the cylinder shaped object the military says it shot down.

The object shot down by a a U.S. Air Force F-22 fighter jet over Mayo, Yukon, was variously described by officials in Canada and the U.S. as a 'cylindrical', metallic balloon with a payload.

Balloons used by hobby groups like NIBBB often fit the same description.

They are usually attached with a small, solar-powered payload that transmits location data back to listening posts on the ground. Typically, these payloads are no larger than a credit card.

Far from posing a military or surveillance threat, the 'pico balloons' launched by hobby groups like NIBBB often do little more than relay location data - or, in some cases, information about the weather. 

They float around until they're damaged or brought down by bad weather. K9YO was airborne for 123 days and 18 hours before it stopped reporting its location.

In that time, it circumnavigated the globe six times.

Our Pico Balloons can be tracked on our website tab, “Locate and Track“.

Pico Balloon Groups.

groups.io/g/picoballoon

Captain Convey Balloon Note

I blew up the title like a balloon. :)

There are private balloons floating around in addition to china spy balloons.

For those of you in Reo Linda, as Rush Limbaugh use to say. a pico balloon is not a china spy ballon but only a ham radio hobby balloon.

The biden regime is trying to make you think they don't know what was shot down using a $400,000 missle.

The balloon shut down over Canada was a pico balloon launched by a ham radio balloon club that had been around the world 6 times before the U.S. military took it out on Feb 11, 2023.

All the news is FAKE news about balloons or UFO's etc.

Why?

China Spy Ballons are a Biden Regime distraction to hide the fact the biden regime blew up the Nord pipeline, biden secret docs found everywhere and inflation going through the roof.

The U.S. house of representatives is investigating biden and hunter biden.

The biden regime wants your attention on balloons instead of his regime's criminal activity!

[love-and-monsters]

Moth Fae Boyfriend

Male moth fae X gender neutral human

Word count: 2931

The trees rustled above you as you walked through the chilly forest. You hadn’t really expected it to get so cold. When it was day, the sun had warmed you adequately, but now, wrapped only in a thin sweatshirt and jeans, you were starting to freeze.

It shouldn’t have been that much of a problem, but unfortunately, you were also completely and totally lost.

You had never been good with directions, making you almost completely dependent on your phone’s GPS whenever you went for a hike. Usually, that was fine. You just made sure you were always in range of a cell tower and had your portable charger.

But somehow, your portable charger had been missed when you packed and you hadn’t noticed until your phone was almost dead. You’d done your best to follow what you could remember of the directions, but it had been twenty minutes past when you were supposed to arrive at your car and you couldn’t even see any familiar landmarks.

You stumbled to a stop as the wind picked up again, piercing you to your core. After some fumbling, you pulled your phone out of your pocket and poked desperately at the screen, hoping it had a tiny scrap of power left and you could at least ascertain your location and the next direction to travel in. But the screen remained stubbornly and firmly black. No dice. You crammed it back into your pocket and looked around.

The last few rays of the sun still offered you a little light, but within thirty minutes, the forest would be pitch black. Even with your flashlight, you weren’t sure how much luck you’d have navigating a pitch black forest.

Panic and despair welled in your chest. Your breath started to come in shallow gasps as you sank to the ground, your back pressed to the rough trunk of the tree. Tears stung at your eyes. You knew, logically, that if you just kept walking, you would eventually get somewhere you could at least charge your phone, but panic at being stranded in the woods at night was overwhelming you.

Just before you could completely give into your terror and sob like a baby, you heard something rustling. Your head snapped up. Wolves? Did wolves live around your home? A mountain lion, maybe? A fox? A bear?

What you actually saw was not any of those things. Not even close, really. Instead, you saw something strange crouched several feet away from you.

It was humanoid in shape, but not human in any way. It had enormous wings, like a lunar moth, attached to its back and antennae pointing back from its head. The dim light of the forest let you see that the shape was glowing faintly in the dark.

It was strange and startling enough that you stopped panicking and just stared. Your first thought was that you were having some sort of strange, terror-induced hallucination. Your second thought was that you were encountering some form of cryptid. You could see it watching you, antennae twitching as it half-crouched in the leaf litter. Then it started to move toward you.

You squeaked and pressed your back firmly against the tree, legs scrambling uselessly in the leaf litter. The creature stopped moving. It blinked at you with large, silver flecked eyes. For several moments, you just stared at each other, waiting for the other to make a move.

Finally, the creature opened its enormous wings. They were a pale shade of green and they glowed in the dark. Two enormous eyespots decorated the tops of the wings, surrounded by little circling lines. Your eyes were drawn to them like magnets. The spots were hypnotic. Everything outside of them faded to a sort of swirling black while you stared into the fathomless, swirling eyes.

And then they snapped shut. You blinked your eyes rapidly, your head clearing, and realized that the moth thing had moved. Now it was less than a foot in front of you.

Up close, you could see that the creature was covered in an exoskeleton that caught any light in an iridescent glow. Thick, white fur covered its neck like a ruff and covered the top of its head in soft curls. It had four arms, with four long, black fingers on each hand. Its expression, despite a set of mandibles covering its mouth and large, black eyes, was almost readable. It looked curious.

“Hello.” Its voice was male, but there was an odd trill to it.

“Hi,” you answered automatically. His expression crinkled in a way that made him look like he was smiling.

“Are you lost?” he asked. “You look scared.”

“Uh.” Was it a good idea to tell this mysterious moth man that you were lost? What if he thought you were an easy target and led you astray. “No?”

The creature tilted his head back and forth, staring with his large eyes. Their silver flecks were quite pretty, especially when they caught the light shining off his wings. “You must be lost,” he said. “Otherwise, how did you summon me?”

You pressed yourself more firmly against the tree and tried to take stock of any weapons you might have on your person. There was your pocket knife, but it was in your backpack and probably buried under the rest of your supplies. You couldn’t think of a way to get it out without alerting him that’s what you were doing. “I didn’t summon you,” you said, trying to stall for time.

“You did,” he insisted, antennae twitching. “You are lost at night, crying in the woods. You called for a guide.” He spread all four of his arms. “I can guide you.”

“I wasn’t crying,” you said. He said nothing, just blinked at you. “Where are you going to guide me to?”

“Wherever you desire to be,” he said. He considered you for a moment. “I mean you no harm.” He stretched out a long hand. “Do you accept the offer?”

You stood, carefully bending back so you didn’t brush against him. “I think I’m good. You can go back to wherever you came from.” You seized your bag and took off into the woods at a brisk walk.

It took only a few moments to realize he was following you.

He moved almost silently through the forest, but it would have been impossible to miss, thanks to his subtle-but-present glow. Eventually, you turned around to glare at him. “I don’t need your help. I’m not lost.”

He seemed both curious and confused at that statement, from the little of his expression you could make out. “You are lying.”

“I am not!” You started to pull out your phone and paused. Right, no battery. And meeting up with a giant moth had completely trashed any sense of where you were in relation to your car.

“My name is Willow,” he offered, approaching you. “Who are you?”

“None of your business,” you said. Willow’s antennae drooped and he gave you a look you could only associate with a kicked puppy. A flicker of guilt stirred in your stomach. “Look, I’m okay, so maybe you should just go home?”

He stared. “You are still lying.”

“How do you know?” you snapped.

He clicked his mandibles and smiled. “It is obvious. You are lost.” He said the phrase like he was trying to poke fun at you this time, instead of stating a fact. “I cannot leave until you have returned home. Or wherever it is you won’t feel lost anymore.”

You weighed your options. On one hand, you could refuse his help, keep wandering the forest and get increasingly lost while he followed you, or give in and let him lead you somewhere, possibly home. “Fine. I want to get to my car.”

He gave his odd, rather hidden smile and turned around in a full circle, antennae twitching wildly. After a few moments, the antennae stopped twitching and pointed together in a single direction. He started walking that way and you had no choice but to follow him.

“So,” you said, trotting up so you were right next to him. He was at least a foot taller than you. “What are you exactly?”

“I am fae,” he said. He tilted his head so he was staring at you with one of his eyes. His antennae kept pointing in the same direction. “A forest guide spirit. I used to guide people through this forest in the old days with my glow.” He shifted his wings, glow flickering over the area around him. “But I haven’t been able to help anyone for a long time. That’s why I presented myself to you.”

“Yeah, that’ll be modern technology.” You waved your phone at him. “I wouldn’t have needed your help if my phone hadn’t died.”

“I’m glad your phone died,” he said.

You raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re happy I’m lost?”

He looked at you uncomprehendingly. “That is not what I meant.”

“No, I know- I was joking.” His expression didn’t change. “Uh, never mind.”

“Can I see what a phone is?” he asked. You hesitated, but you couldn’t imagine him taking off into the forest with a phone. What did a fae even want with a phone? You held it out to him and he delicately took it. His sharp fingertips grazed your palm.

He clumsily poked at the buttons and rotated it in his hands. You winced when he tapped his sharp claw against the screen. “It seems useless,” he said.

“Yeah, because it’s out of power,” you said, taking it back and examining the screen. There were no new scratches, thank god. “I need to charge it. But when it works, it can give me directions.”

“That is interesting,” he said, though he didn’t look like he was actually all that interested. His antennae twitched and he readjusted his course. “Can your phone-”

You never learned what he was going to say next because one of your feet caught on a branch and you tumbled head over heels down the slope you were on. Willow let out a cry of surprise as you rolled down the hill, thudding on rocks that jutted up from the leaf litter. You came to a sharp stop when your back hit a tree, thankfully not hard enough to damage anything.

Willow skidded to a stop next to you. “Are you all right?” He looked ruffled. His mane was fluffed up, his wings were half extended and his antennae were pointing down at you.

“Ow.” You sat up slowly, feeling the ache of multiple bruises on your body. “That sucked.”

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Willow asked, all four of his hands hovering awkwardly over your body.

“Technically, I am hurt everywhere,” you said, standing up. “But not that bad. I’m just banged up.”

Willow’s antennae rotated back in the direction of your car. “Maybe you shouldn’t try walking in the dark anymore,” he suggested.

“What else are we supposed to do?” you asked.

Willow offered you his four arms. “I can fly and I could carry you, if you desired.”

You regarded him suspiciously. Not only did that seem like an ideal strategy if he wanted to kidnap you, but there was also the very real fact that he could drop you. “Uh.”

“I promise I will not drop you,” he said. He gave one of his slightly strange smiles and you found it hard to say no. You couldn’t stand to hurt his feelings.

If he was trying to kidnap you, he was amazingly effective at it. Had any other kidnappers attempted to weaponize their cuteness? It was apparently a good strategy.

“Fine. Carry me back to my car, then.” Before you could even try to prepare, he grabbed you in all four of his arms, bridal style, and took off.

His wings worked to carry the pair of you higher and higher into the sky. Within seconds, you had cleared the tops of the trees and were heading up toward the full moon.

It was quite a beautiful night. The moon was large in the sky and the stars were mirrored by the little lights on the ground. Up above the trees, you could see Willow’s glow even more clearly. It was a perfect pale green, soft against the darkness without being harsh.

He was fuzzy too, which you hadn’t really thought about. But the ruff around his neck was soft and warm and you were pretty happy that your position let you press your cheek into it.

You had been expecting flying to be sort of terrifying. After all, you were flying in the arms of a fae with nothing to protect you if you fell. But it was oddly peaceful in the sky. There was only the wind whistling by and the gentle flapping of Willow’s wings.

“It’s nice up here,” you observed. You leaned over, trying to get a better look at the ground. Willow’s hands tightened around you.

“Try not to move,” he said. “I really don’t want to drop you.” He considered for a moment. “I would be able to catch you, of course, but I don’t want to have to do that.”

“Right,” you agreed. “That would be bad.” You wrapped your arms around his neck, just in case. He didn’t seem to mind all that much. His arms tightened around you gently.

It only took you a few minutes of flying over the forest to reach your car. Willow circled for a moment before dropping down next to it. His wings gave a few extra flutters, then he placed you in the ground. You wobbled for a moment, Willow keeping one of his upper hands on your back in order to steady you. “Here is your car!” he said cheerfully. “We made it!”

“Oh, thank god,” you said, slumping across the hood of your car. “Oh, I have never been happier to see this stupid gas guzzler.”

His antennae twitched and he gave one of his soft little smiles. “I’m glad that my services were appreciated.” He dipped his torso in a little bow. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

You hesitated. “I don’t think so. I know my way home from here, so I guess we can part ways now.” You turned fully to face him. “Thank you, by the way. I don’t know if I said that already.”

“You didn’t. I appreciate it.” Willow smiled, eyes shining in the moonlight. His wings opened and he took a step back. “Perhaps we will see each other again someday.”

“Maybe,” you said. His wings fluttered and he retreated into the woods. Within a few seconds, his faint glow had vanished.

You stared after him for a few seconds, until you were sure he was really gone, then you turned and got into your car. Your headlights flared to life, illuminating the darkness, and you drove into the night.

A few weeks later, you returned to the forest. It was midday when you hiked back up to the spot you’d met Willow in. Or, at least, where you thought it was. Maybe it was a good thing if you couldn’t fine it? Might draw him out sooner.

There was a rustling from behind you. You whirled around in time to see Willow stepping out from behind a tree. He peered at you curiously, antennae twitching. “Hello. What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you,” you said. He tilted his head at you. His wings fluttered.

“Why? Are you lost again?” He stepped closer to you, gaze curious.

“Uh. Not exactly. I just wanted to see you.”

Willow blinked at you. After a moment, he smiled, though it was still a little confused. “Why would you want to see me if you aren’t lost?”

You gave a shy grin. “Because the last time we met was nice and I wanted to see you again.”

His antennae twitched rapidly and his wings fluttered. His glow, faint as it was in the sunlight, deepened slightly. You wondered if that was his form of blushing. “You just wanted to see me?”

“Yeah. I’ve never net a fae before. I thought it would be cool to see you again. And, uh, I thought you might like to see this.” You pulled your phone out of your pocket and held it out to him. “I charged it, so I thought you might like to see it, if you wanted.”

“Really?” His antennae poked straight up and he held out his hands. You tilted your phone into it and watched his eyes widen as the screen lit up. “Oh… It’s beautiful!”

“You haven’t done anything with it yet,” you said. He just stared into the phone screen, glossy eyes reflecting its light.

“The light is so pretty,” he mumbled, eyes widening more than you thought was possible. You couldn’t help but giggle at his ridiculously entranced expression. Gently, you took the phone from him. He blinked a few times, shaking himself out of his trance.

“But that still doesn’t explain how you were able to summon me,” he said. “Usually only people who are lost can bring me out.”

You grinned, feeling a blush touch your cheeks. “I guess I just felt lost without you, then.”

 He stared at you with eyes almost as wide as when he’d looked into your phone screen. Then he leaned forward and pressed his forehead gently to yours. His soft hair tickled your skin. You grinned, holding him close. You no longer felt lost.

[wildshub]

WHO: The Twilight of Adams WHAT: The boys head over to the cliff to turn on the repaired radio, hoping to get into contact with someone who can rescue them.  WHEN: Day 2 NOTE: For future reference.

Callum Callum would rather hike to the cliff and back with broken legs twenty times over than do it once with all of the other boys from the plane. Between two of the boys having to be carried and Warren teaching them all a song about how English was his favorite subject the entire way there, the Canadian felt thisclose to offing himself. The only thing keeping Callum from doing so was knowing that when they reached the cliff, they could finally turn the radio on. The radio that was now all fixed thanks to Jorts and JJ. “Yo, hey!” He called out to Sebastian when he first caught a glimpse of the boy and the fire they'd started. “They fixed the antenna. Let’s get this thing going." He practically yanked Warren off of Blue's back and dragged him over to Sebastian once they reached their destination. Not even bothering to ask Warren if he could touch his bag, Callum unzipped it and got the radio out, showing it off to Sebastian like it was the Stanley fucking Cup. "The twerps fucking did it."

Sebastian Sebastian could have waved at Callum, he could have given him any more of a greeting than the simple nod of acknowledgement that he did but he wasn't trying to be hella gay or anything, so alas, he remained fairly static. "Shit, you're kidding me," he found it hard to believe that Jorts could accomplish anything other than being chronically annoying but he didn't say that, instead he allowed himself to relish in the feeling of success, as limited as it was. "Wait, wait, wait, before we go too crazy, we need a strat," he instructed with his hands out in front of him, warning the other boys. "You said we've got limited battery on this thing- we don't want to waste it stuttering like idiots. We need to know how we're gonna handle the frequency and we need to know what we're gonna say and we need to know it by heart before we even touch that on button,"

Lukas "Yo, the fuck, dude, " Lukas objected half-assed-ly as he witnessed Callum pull Warren from Blue's back and basically dragged him over to Sebastian and the fire like they were about to sacrifice the Nordic cripple. Though he'd stuck towards the back of the group the hike up, now shit seemed to be happening he pushed the pace to catch up. Nudging Blue on the arm as he passed, he asked " You good? " with raised brow, referencing the bullshit Callum was on. But he didn't linger long, making his way to Thing 1 and Thing 2 but on steroids before they ruined his whole day of work on that stupid radio. " Bro, just because you couldn't even think to turn the thing on doesn't make the rest of us Stephen Hawking or whatever the fuck, " He said, announcing his presence with dry tone. He cast a glance to Warren, just to make sure the fucker hadn't lost a leg in the last thirty seconds thanks to Callum and his island famous manners. " If we're lucky, and, really fucking stupid lucky, " he was trying his best to be serious but even with his best efforts he still sounded kind of like he was taking the piss, " the frequency hasn't moved far from whatever channel it was on to begin with. But, it was in the ocean, " and Callum basically dry humped it all night, " so chances aren't looking too hot. Whatever we say it's gotta be short enough that we can say it, wait a few seconds on that channel for response, then move on without wasting a fuckload of battery. "

Sawyer With an extra hundred-and-some pounds on Sawyer’s back, the hike up the cliff had been a bitch on his ankle. But it was considerably less damage than Liam would’ve done if he’d tried to climb up on his own – and Lord knew they needed all the manpower they could get if they were stuck here any longer than a couple nights. After letting him down, Sawyer wandered over to where the rest of the group had congregated, clapping Canada on the shoulder and standing on his tiptoes to get a good look at the radio. "Shame we can't tap into a police frequency," he said. That would be his first try if a radio happened to wash up onshore with its batteries still intact. "How about our plane number, the number of guys stranded here, and, uh...shit, to bring us some fuckin' life rafts or somethin'."

Liam while liam was extremely grateful that sawyer offered to carry him up to the cliff, he couldn't help the feeling of guilt the entire way. he may be the shortest guy out of the group, but he was still pretty stocky and muscular. lukas probably weighed less than him. but thankfully they made it and the other boy let him down, liam hopping a few times before getting steady on his feet, making sure to not put too much pressure on his bad leg. "does anyone remember the plane number?" he spoke up, feeling like he was going to be shot with a bunch of sass from the meaner members of the group. "but uh, yeah, definitely say how many of us are here..."

Blue blue nodded in response as people check in on him, and he didnt mind shooing them off but the truth was carrying warren was tiring. he leaned against a tree, catching his breath while watching the others regroup, rallying around the radio. "is there like....a global mayday code?" his words came between breaths, occassionally glsncing around. "how many of us are injured too maybe....?"

Callum Callum shrugged the Hick's hand off of his shoulder, shooting him a clear dude, the fuck? look. "Who even remembers a plane number?" He pointed out. "Does anyone know it?" A question for the rest of the huddle. "Number of guys is good. And the injured thing too." He gave Blue props in the form of a nod for that. "But global mayday code? So like what, 911?" Nothing else came to mind.

Sebastian Sebastian listened to the others, some more carefully than others. "I don't think we need to waste time talking about who's injured and who's not, nobody's dying and they'll figure it out when they get there," he suggested, though the number of people in need of rescue was definitely worth mentioning. "Nah, 911 is just the U.S. bro, there's another one for international emergencies but that's on cell phones. Radios are a whole different ball game, it doesn't work like a dial-in service"

Liam liam froze for a second as everyone started talking over each other to figure out the best way to go about this. he always had a bad habit of freezing in stressful situations, and this was about as stressful as it could get. but after some talk about 911, he tried to find his voice and speak up. "i'm pretty sure you just say, like, mayday three times or something. the other people will figure it out. you don't need a code. at least that's what they do in movies."

Lukas Lukas didn't know why telling whoever might be listening how many were injured was necessary at all but maybe they would edit before the decided on a final message. For the most part he stayed quiet (shockingly) while ideas were thrown around, just watching the two meatheads with the radio. Afraid they might get a little too riled up and break the thing, like he hadn't been basically tossing it around that very morning. He didn't know the flight number, even though his mother had said it a million and one times just yesterday, but Lukas did know an international mayday code. " Like, SOS? " He asked, looking to the group, surely these dumb motherfuckers didn't mean that and not be able to think of it. " That's the international distress code, " or if it wasn't technically, at least anyone on a boat or plane out there would know what the fuck it was.

Blue as he sat beside his pal liam, he listened in, but looked to sky like he'd see a helicoptor and could say nevermind to all this. "so..sos, uh...what 9 stranded...mayday?" it wasnt like he expected his word to make an impact but he has hoped he could organize all this before having to carry warren back down.

Sawyer Sawyer feigned hurt when Callum shrugged his hand off, rolling his lips together to stifle a chuckle when he looked away again. He couldn’t see shit with everyone huddled together like this, so he opted to step back from the group and poke a rock around with his toe. “It don’t work like a GPS,” he interjected, “so nobody’s gonna know what the hell we’re talkin’ about if we just go in with a stress signal. Flight number’s our best bet of being located, with the name of the island we were s'posed to land on second.”

Sebastian Sebastian found himself getting increasingly frustrated with the group he'd unfortunately become a part of by way of disaster. "That's a fucking morse code distress signal- not a stress signal and it's for when you don't have a radio, this is different," his voice became a little harsher as he continued. "Yes, you say mayday, we got that part sorted, okay, we need to tune into a frequency so that we're actually saying it to somebody that can actually do something about our situation and not some fucking ninety year old ham radio loser in Iowa trying to make a friend," he explained. "-but you're right. We need flight number or anybody with a unique enough name. I'm Sebastian Claude Sergeant," he announced, though he wasn't convinced it was unique enough. "Blue, Dash- those your legal names? You're probably our best bet if so unless your last names are Smith,"

Sawyer Sawyer raised his hand, still kicking a rock around. "I got a criminal record."

Warren For once, this conversation got interesting to him. He turned to Sawyer. "That's sexy. For what?"

Sebastian Sebastian turned to Sawyer suddenly at the revelation, "What the fuck?" perhaps it was the suddenness of the statement or perhaps it was the fact itself but either way, it had surprised Sebastian in that moment. "Okay, you're out, nobody's coming for you," he decided, as if a criminal record immediately made Sawyer disposable, regardless of what it was for. "Shut up, Von Trapp, now is not the time," he spat at Warren a moment later, "Names, who has a good one," he reminded the group.

Blue blue was ready to responde but hearing sebastian's full name caught him off guard. "word? ok. blue barrowcliffe. legal name." he offered an understanding look to sawyer, not based on shared experience but moreso on wanting sawyer to feel alright. unless he murdered someone.

Sawyer "Hotwirin' a 1500," he replied, winking and clicking his tongue. "Meanin'~" Sawyer spun around on his foot. "They can legally look me up in state records. You got state records in your name, Claude?"

Liam liam's eyes widened when sawyer say that out of nowhere. of course that annoyed sebastian and the two went at each other. liam just looked down at his feet and mumbled to himself, "i do." not that anyone asked him. but he just hated how heated everything was getting and wasn't really thinking.

Sebastian Sebastian did not, for a second like being referred to by his middle name, especially not with such a facetious fucking tone from Deliverance. "Yeah, cowboy, I got a birth certificate, a social security number, enrollment in school, my car is registered, I've got medical records- do you want me to continue, genius?" he asked bitterly before Liam piped up. "You do what, bro? If you've got something to say, use your words,"

Lukas " It's a radio thing, dude, " Lukas said, mainly just to be contrary to Sebastian but he was also fairly certain he was right. He snorted a laugh when Sebastian revealed his middle name, but didn't risk saying anything about it. The snort was enough to let Gigantor know that it sounded fucking stupid. Looking to Sawyer when he revealed his criminal record, he didn't think now was the time to bring up his own. And plus, high school drug dealing didn't really compare to auto theft. But, it was still a good idea. " Yo, that's smart. " He complimented, though Liam's confession was far more surprising. Unlike Sebastian he could put together context clues. " A criminal record? Does it beat auto theft? " He asked, not really able to imagine short king doing anything besides maybe some smoking. " I'm thinking it's between Big Blue and GTA right now, " no one cares what you're thinking, Lukas.

Liam he looked up when sebastian addressed him, not realizing anyone heard him. "nothing," he said quietly, deciding to stay quiet for the rest of the time.

Callum "Okay, so... fuck." He shook his head, keeping up with that entire exchange made his brain feel like mush. "We'll use Blue's name, mention how many of us are here and... shit,  really does no one remember the plane number?"

Blue blues proximity allowed him another front row view to liam’s emotions and he gave him a soft pat on the back. while he hadn’t wanted to rock claude’s boat, he felt protective to the guys he was so critical of. "hey, we're getting sidetracked. let’s agree on a message and get home. I domt know the plane number or the pilot’s name.....what fucking company even set this retreat up?"

Liam "no, it does," he said to lukas when he asked, feeling like he was just wasting everyone's time anytime he spoke. he glanced over to blue and gave him a small smile when he tried to comfort him. "it was the twilight of adam," he remembers because his lawyer kept repeating it to the judge as if it was some church thing to rehabilitate him.

Warren Warren was never one for idle moments. He was the type of person who hated being still for too long. Nothing bored him like conversations that seemed to go nowhere. He was a person of action. The only way he could tolerate another minute of these boys not recalling information and sharing their gay middle names was if he was drunk, and unfortunately, there was not a drop of Dom Perignon Brut in him. He sighed. "Okay, you know what��" He had a lot of energy saved up from being carried up here. He could do this. He hopped over and snatched the radio out of Callum's hands, making quick work of getting away by prancing over to the ledge where he knew everyone would be careful around him. He turned the radio on. "Mayday, mayday, 911, this is Blue Cliffebarrel, I'm on an unknown island with 15 other boys and one of us have a criminal record, over."

Lukas Maybe they all should have expected Warren to be the one to cause trouble, but it certainly surprised Lukas when he made a grab for the radio, succeeded, and then hobbled away to the edge of the cliff before anyone could do anything about it. " What the fuck, " he reacted, more statement than question but it quickly got more heated when the cripple started talking " Dude! " He raced over, though Warren's plan worked and he slowed down when he got close to the edge. " Did you not hear any of that shit about the battery? " He snatched the walkie out of his hands, feeling a lot better now he had it rather than Warren or either of the Hulk impersonators. " And none of that even made any fucking sense, if anyone heard that they're just gonna think we're some idiot kids fucking around. " He said irritably, turning the thing back off. Too be fair, they were some idiot kids but he thought they were trying their best not to fuck around.

Sebastian  Sebastian's patience had been wearing thing, needless to say. Not that it had been particularly in tact even before the other boys had started squawking at each other. When Warren snatched the radio, however, regardless of his precarious position, Sebastian launched. "Are you fucking kidding me? Do you want to fucking die today? You said nothing- nothing of any value and nobody understands your goddamn hurdy durdy bullshit anyway," his was easily the most offensive of all the accents on the island in Sebastian's firm opinion. He couldn't believe he was in agreement with Jorts but for the first and perhaps the last time, Jorts was right, this was not the time to fuck around and he was glad the radio was turned off again. "Thank you" he offered the smaller boy genuinely, slightly relieved that the radio was seemingly in the hands of somebody that was taking this shit seriously now.

Warren "I said everything you all were talking about," Warren launched into his own defense as the walkie was snatched away from him. " Did I miss anything?" He asked the group, not waiting around for their answers. "I didn't miss a beat!" And then of course, Sebastian had to go off on him because if he didn't go off on someone every hour, his penis would shrink in size and that clearly couldn't happen. "Oh fuck off, Claude. Je m'en fous, frère. Coller l'antenne dans ton cul! Vous vous sentirez mieux."

Sawyer Right. Sawyer didn't speak French, but those sounded enough like fighting words for him to step between Claudia and the angry little Swedish man, putting a sizable distance between them. "Yeah, alright, oui oui. Last thing we need is to start fightin' with each other, so let's just...re-calibrate. Curly can take it from here, yeah?"

Sebastian Sebastian squared his shoulders at Warren's squealing, "Yeah you missed the part where you did anything fucking useful- Barrel-cliff, are you fucking kidding me?" he had registered it the first time but reminded of the mistake, he fired up all over again. Then came yet another Claude jab, "Call me Claude one more fucking time, I dare you, I'll hit you so goddamn hard you'll have to learn to speak French without teeth," he warned, whether Warren was on the cliff or not didn't matter much to Sebastian when his patience was being tested. He inhaled sharply at Sawyer's advice and nodded his head, "Yeah," he agreed, cracking the knuckles of one hand in his palm, "Back to square one,"

Lukas Ask him an hour ago if Lukas ever thought him and Sebastian would be on the same side of an argument Lukas would have made a fart noise in response. But now look at them, Lukas was having to hold back another Claude comment after he was thanked. Hyper aware of the cliff edge seeing as Claude was basically shaking Warren over it he took a few steps back towards the group and the fire. " Yeah, " He confirmed, looking up when Sawyer spoke. He actually didn't want this responsibility but he did not trust any of these idiots with it, not even the idiots he liked, so it had to fall to him. " So, " he started, running over all the suggestions from before Warren's interjection in his head. " Mayday, flight number, Twilight of Adam. How many of us there are, and a name they can look up easily. " He listed the things off, counting them on his fingers and conveniently leaving out the ones he thought were dumb. " That it? " He asked the group, letting it sit for a beat before he brought up the point Callum had just before. " Does anyone have any idea of the flight number? " Because he sure as fuck didn't.

JJ with all the bickering in the air, Jacob got lost in thought trying to figure out if the geographical landmarks of the island could tell him any more of their current location. Other than tropical and approaching rain season, he didn’t seem to notice much else. It wasn’t until Lukas had presented the questions again that his mind was pulled back to reality. “Private hire Boeing 12596...” he replied calmly. “Fifteen survivors. Heading through South-West links. Jacob Sanders, that’s my name. Plane crashed roughly two hours and fourty minutes from the expected arrival time to Hawaii. If the pilot flew the right route, they should be able to find us.” He said all he had to say and left the others to decide what to do with it. Of course, he felt he knew a better way to do so but did not want to be met with Sebastians anger issues, Warrents utter imbecility or anyone else’s need for explanations.

Sebastian Sebastian pointed at JJ and clicked his fingers, "That's it- fucking perfect- almost. A few changes- you're gonna say you're Blue Barrowcliffe, Canadian national- and make sure you mention that the plane went down. Private hire Boeing- whatever- down," he corrected, "Don't waste time we don't have," he justified a moment later.

Warren Warren rolled his eyes at all of Sebastian's threats. Hagrid didn't scare him one bit. He made faces behind Stumbo the Giant's back as JJ swooped in to save the day, doing his best to stay standing on his good foot as he listened in. He supposed what JJ said was far better than what he'd come up with. He didn't like how Sebastian seemed to be happy about it. He was going to do something to change that. "Are we sure we don't want to go with Sebastian Claude Sergeant? Because I would cross oceans in seconds just to see what kind of person that gay ass name belongs to."

Sebastian If it wasn't clear that Sebastian had had enough of Warren by now, the look on his face after his most recent comment would surely make it clear, even to NASA. He spun around to face the male and wrapped his hand around his neck firmly, "Good idea, I'll throw you across the fucking ocean to show you what kind of person I am," he suggested savagely, tugging ruthlessly at the other boy's throat as he got in close to his face.

Warren "Not really my kink but choking is close. Do it harder," Warren gasped out, grinning like an idiot as his face grew red.

Sawyer Their brief moment of triumph was quickly overshadowed by Sebastian’s short temper, and none of them were currently in the position to weather that storm. Sawyer acted on reflex, reaching out to grip Sebastian’s shoulder in a feeble attempt to pull him away from Warren and the edge of the cliff they were standing on. “Woah woah, hey - fuck, man, enough, you’re gonna kill him!”

Lukas Thank God JJ had enough braincells to make up for the rest of this sorry gang of misfits. Lukas felt a wave of relief wash over him as JJ was able to answer all the questions he had and without being an absolute moron about it. " Boeing 12596, heading through South-West links, " he repeated those details, nodding as he tried to commit them to memory. But on top of that, JJ had been calm about most things so far, approaching everything with reason, so it made Lukas think he'd be the least likely to stumble under pressure. Plus, JJ was probably the only person besides himself that he didn't need to watch like a hawk with the radio. " Alright, do you wann– " he starts to offer the radio, but before he can finish Gigantor and the Nordic cripple were having at it. " What the fuck, " he uttered for the third time in about five minutes, looking over at the interaction but with the radio still in hand he made no move to get between them like Sawyer did. Even in the weird circumstances an abrupt laugh escaped him at Warren's gasped comment. Then he looked to Callum, probably one of the only guys in the group that had any chance of taking on Sebastian. " You wanna fucking get control of your buddy there? " He raised his brows and tilted head towards the situation aka Warren getting murked and liking it.

Sebastian Sebastian stumbled back with hands on his shoulders but he didn't take Sawyer's words as a warning, "Then I'd be doing everybody a goddamn favor," he shot back, it didn't seem like a bad thing if the loudmouth European took a plunge off the edge of this conveniently placed cliff if it meant he didn't take any more shots at fucking up their plans for survival...or call him Claude again. He shrugged Sawyer's grip off of him but it didn't do much to ease his hostility toward Warren who was pressing just about every button Sebastian had at this point.

Callum Callum was fixated on the radio. He just wanted everyone to shut the fuck up so JJ could turn that thing on and spout all the information they took forever to agree on already. But then Warren. The fucking invalid idiot just couldn't keep his mouth shut. He sighed, moving away from JJ to assist Sawyer in deescalating the situation. "Yo, hey, Sebastian-" His concern for the situation grew when the Hick was shrugged off and the pressure around Warren's neck didn't ease. "Hey! C'mon!" He grabbed onto Sebastian's shoulders and pulled, hoping a more aggressive approach would make a difference.

Warren Warren was suffering. But he was also: thriving. Seeing the anger on Sebastian's face brought him joy like you would not believe. It was the only fun he's had on this island so far. "Is this all you got, Claude? Did Daddy not show you how it's done? You have to do it like this-" His hands left their position over Sebastian's, moving to grip Claude's neck with his own fingers.

Sebastian It was the name, it was the mention of his father, it was the shit-eating grin on Warren's face. Sebastian was immediately seeing red again and no amount of 'hey come on's from any of the other boys was enough for him to simmer down. "You wanna lose this fucking hand?" he asked, gripping onto the other boy's wrist still with Warren's  hand wrapped around, "Try it, I fucking dare you, see what happens,"

JJ He was mildly amused by the situation at hand. He found Sebastian’s irrational anger to Warrens imbecilic digs to be a waste of time and energy. Perhaps neither of them were aware just how important energy was in situations such as these, where the distance between them and their next meal was unknown and so was the distance between them and the rescue. Trying to speed the situation up, he’ll take the radio over from Lukas and move aside from the dick measuring contest. He adjusts the antenna until he can hear out the clear static. “Mayday, mayday” he will repeat, hoping the channel would pass through their call for help. “Maybe we could..” he skips through different channels, trying his best to find something intelligible, in any language. “We should get higher.”

Radio "92.1–" Static noises.

Lukas Unlike JJ, even preoccupied by the radio, Lukas was growing increasingly concerned about the whole Warren and Sebastian situation. Maybe if they weren't so close to a cliff, he wouldn't be so concerned– but then again Dash's words about Sebastian being their very own General Zaroff came to mind. His attention snapped back to JJ and the radio when the radio seemed to spurt something out, though it was hard to hear. " Did that just say something? " He asked looking back up at JJ, maybe he'd watched Ghost Adventures too many fucking times and was just making himself hear shit in the static. He nodded in agreement at the idea of getting higher, their makeshift antenna needed all the help it could get. Though, he couldn't leave without saying anything. " You think they're good? Like Sawyer and Callum probably have it handled, right? " He asked, glancing to the group by the cliff and then back to JJ, once again asking him for some reassurance that they weren't all gonna die here.

Sawyer Sawyer’s gaze flickered between the two groups of boys, spine stiffening as the radio whirred and crackled to life. That was it—that light at the end of the tunnel they were all so desperately chasing after. It was too fucking close for them to turn their backs on it now. He shot an urgent look at Callum, tilting his head toward Sebastian as if to say, fucking pull him off.

JJ With Lukas' attention dancing between the radio and the bikini contest, JJ focused entirely on quickly securing the antenna further using the string coming off his sleeve. As the static started coming through he could feel his body buzz with surprise and he'll press the button to the right. "Mayday, Mayday, Boeing 12596 coming through, do you copy?" he releases the button to allow the other side to process and continues to walk further up the hill, unsure if the change of location was actually helping the process or if they would have had a better chance sticking to the coast. "Come on..." he says, turning towards the group. "We might have something."

Callum The radio! It was obvious to anyone what Callum cared about more. Honestly, would it be the worst thing if Sebastian crushed Warren's windpipes? They could use all the quiet they could get to hear that thing. "Sebastian, come on, quit it-" He hooked an arm over Sebastian and leaned back, hoping his weight and the force would successfully separate the two. "Yo, Texas! A hand!"

Warren Warren has never been so close to death before. And he's taken a dangerous cocktail of party favors with nothing but a shot of absinth in his stomach once before. "Come on, Daddy Claude! Harder! Show me how you do it back home!" He laughed maniacally.

Sebastian That was the last straw, or maybe it was the laugh, or maybe Sebastian was just over tired but he wasn't fucking around anymore and without a moment more of hesitation he threw his weight into a punch that connected seamlessly with the other boy's face.

Sawyer “Jesus Christ,” Sawyer muttered beneath his breath; the first time he’d ever considered calling for God to help them escape from this apocalyptic hellhole. He hadn’t been quick enough to grab Sebastian’s arm before it reeled back, releasing with a sharp punch that caused a crack so loud it sent chills down Sawyer’s spine. He did, however, have the sense to grab Warren’s arm and yank him forward—at least enough to keep him from plummeting to his early death. “Alright, we need to cool it. Now.”

Lukas Okay, so, JJ's non-response didn't fucking settle Lukas' nerves at all. So instead he simply had to focus on the radio, the yelling all getting a little too fucking real for him real quickly. When he suggested moving, Lukas followed, though not without casting a glance over his shoulder to catch the argument getting more and more heated by the second. When a fist connected with Warren's face, Lukas was shocked. Not that Sebastian had hit someone, that was fairly predictable, but just at the whole fucking situation. " Yo, we gotta fucking get to someone before Gigantor fucking kills him. " He said, not bothering to hide the growing panic, turning back to JJ and continuing to follow him further up the hill. Using the ideal of not witnessing a death on top of all the trauma of surviving a plane crash to focus him on helping with the radio.

JJ He would have continued walking as he was and expecting everyone to fall in line. Once again, as per usual, he was let down by the sheer lack of ability some humans possessed to prioritise. Looking over his shoulder, he witnesses the argument, teasing and pinning had now gotten much too real and he'll stop in his tracks, passing the radio over to Lukas before heading back for the group. For the first time, he will approach Sebastian directly. His voice remains calm, almost quiet. "If you walk front of the line, you won't be able to hear the next thing coming out his mouth. Come on, radio is buzzing." he'll give Warren a look filled with pity, uncontrollably so and with the same tone he'll not even bother to check if the others head was still in place. "You walk the back of the line. Your leg is fucked enough." with a sigh, he'll look over at everyone else. "Everyone good? Can we keep moving?" they still had to reach the peak and walk all the way back before the sun sets. Otherwise, they might have just made a fatal mistake.

Warren Warren spat, a spatter of red and enamel on the ground when he did so. "Fuck..." Coughing, he gripped onto Sawyer to stay standing. He accidentally put weight on his bad foot in the middle of the chaos he'd started, so in addition to his mouth throbbing from the impact of Sebastian's fist, his leg now twinged with pain too. "He started it..." Warren had the audacity to say, holding onto to Sawyer a little tighter in anticipation for how Sebastian would react to that.

Sebastian Sebastian looked at the male with pure and utter disdain at how pathetic he looked and sounded. "-and I'll finish it too, don't think I won't," he barked in response, more than happy to give him another smack to even out the bruising on each side.

Callum Callum clapped a hand over Sebastian's shoulder. "Stop. C'mon, man." He was tired. He just wanted to get to the fucking peak like JJ said and try to reach out to someone. This shit, whatever was going on between Sebastian and Warren, it was a pointless waste of time.

Sawyer Normally, Sawyer liked to think of himself as the one with his head screwed on (somewhat) straight in times of disarray, but the calm coldness of JJ’s voice as he addressed the other boys was eerie—even to him. He stumbled a little as Warren shifted his weight into Sawyer’s side, looking down to see splatters of blood painted across his own white undershirt. Shit. He’d just bought this one for the trip, too. “Yeah, nah, JJ’s right. We’re done with all...this.”

Lukas The next couple seconds happen way too fast for Lukas to process in the moment. One second, he'd handed off the radio duty to JJ and the next JJ was successfully pulling the two that were fighting (if you could call what Warren was doing fighting back,) apart and seemingly ending the commotion. He was paused on the hill, watching it all unfold, but after a second another unintentional chuckle tumbled from his lips. " Are y'all done? " He called out to the group by the cliff, amusement on his tongue and shit eating grin back on his features as if he hadn't been scared shitless moments ago. " 'Cause we actually got fucking signal on this mother fucker, " He said enthusiastically, holding up the walkie in celebratory manner. A small and probably shit attempt to stop another fight from breaking out any second.

Sebastian Sebastian raised his hands, though there was a self-satisfied smugness coloring his features that made it obvious that he was pretty pleased with himself, despite the blood shed- or perhaps because of it. "I'm done," he announced plainly, happy for all things to be said and done as long as Warren didn't dare open his fat mouth again, at least for another half an hour or so. He wiped his hand on his shorts, whether it was spit or blood he didn't know, nor did he care, "So we're high enough to get a signal, now we need to find a better channel, right- is that what we're saying?"

Lukas Okay was it just Lukas or were he and Sebastian actually getting along? Nothing brings people together like almost murdering and almost witnessing murder. " Pretty much, " Lukas confirmed, though it was mainly just an assumption. His radio knowledge was still relatively basic, even after rebuilding this one with JJ. " We're gonna go a little higher, see if it can get any clearer. 'Cause while you guys were jacking each other off or whatever, " he had to make a joke, even dismissively, he couldn't actually acknowledge what he had just witnessed " I swear to God, this thing said something. " He insisted, though he hadn't actually caught what it had said in the moment.  " So let's go, " he said, turning on his heel and returning to the mission of getting a bit higher before anyone could get back to the murder.

Sawyer The snort that escaped Sawyer after Curly’s little dig was entirely involuntary, but also entirely deserved. He was just glad he didn’t have to be an accessory to murder today—that’d be a hard one to explain to his parole officer when he got home. With a final, mournful sigh for his dirtied, bloodied shirt, he chucked the thing off over his head and handed it to Warren. “For the bleeding, Bateman.” Sawyer clapped his hands together. “Now let’s get the fuck outta here.”

Warren "Thank you, Yeehaw." His lips pushed into whatever form of a smile he could manage. Warren bunched up the shirt and pressed it to his mouth, giving Sebastian a nasty glance as he did so.

Callum "Alright." Callum clapped his hands together, glad JJ was able to settle the commotion. "Let's fucking do this." He was more than ready to put this dumb shit behind them for the sake of accomplishing what they actually came to do today. He jogged up to Jort's side, wanting to be up close to the action in case the thing crackled to life again.

Lukas As the group continued up the hill, Lukas returned his attention to the radio. Turning it back on, he adjusts the antenna until he's satisfied with the static settling and speaks into the machine. " Mayday, mayday. This is Blue Barrowcliffe, one of fifteen survivors of flight Boeing 12596. Do you copy? " It felt completely silly to say he was Blue, the Canadian that looked literally nothing like his scrawny New Jerseyan self, but aside from JJ he didn't know if he could trust any of these guys with the radio. " I repeat, fifteen survivors of flight Boeing 12596, " he said the numbers slowly and clearly, if someone heard them the numbers would be their saving grace. " Do you copy? "

Sebastian Sebastian could hardly fucking believe that Jorts had actually managed to stick to the script, he'd nailed it. "Canadian- say you're Canadian," he reminded Lukas, waving his hand a little with encouragement as he listened carefully to the static on the other end of the radio device, praying that words in any language came from it- even one of the languages Von Trapp spoke would do. "Keep going," he insisted, his heart in his throat as he awaited a response from somebody with the potential to save their sorry asses.

Radio Lengthy static noises. "Ha-" Static noises. "Gehen-" Static noises. "Liest du-" Static noises. "-nächsten hafen." Static.

Sawyer The excitement was palpable now, eyes lighting up and heads perking with hope. Sawyer grasped the shoulder of the boy nearest to him and shook it, laughing. “Fuckin’ A, we got a fuckin’ German!”

Liam liam stood off to the side as everything went down. his hand flying up to over his own mouth as he watched the altercation between sebastian and warren, but the last thing he was going to do was step in between them and end up in the same position because sebastian redirects his rage to him. but finally lukas can get a message out. static and a few broken words that he couldn’t understand, heart sinking when sawyer announces that it’s a german. “does anyone know german?” he asks, looking around at the others.

Blue blue hadnt said much during the saga, other than an extremely confused "why the hell did i have to carry him" when warren zoomed into chaos at a speed blue's exhausted mind and body couldnt keep up to. he sat away from the drama, and while he would normally intervene to save morale but his body seemed glued to ground. hearing his name echoed by the others tothe radio, he imagined his parents and his sister, and a lump in his throat had to be swallowed down, tears avoided for now. as the confrontation got more violent, blue rested his head between his knees, fighting sleep or panic, the yelling and tension a little too intense of a reminder of...her. he resumed his role helping the injured, though more resentkful of helping mr instigator. "warren......youre swiss, eh? dont your people speak like swiss french and german? what'd they say, man?"

Lukas Lukas is about to tell Sebastian that he doesn't even sound Canadian, not even a little bit, and that saying he was would be kind of fucking stupid when the radio spattered to life in his hands. He looked down at it, amazed. After half a second of awe at his own handiwork he tried moving the antenna and pushed himself to move up the hill faster to help get rid of the static. Sawyer picked up on the language before he did and he glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the group. He sort of had his toes crossed for JJ to come through again, even if his behaviour was a little unsettling– but then Blue addressed the European. And while he was probably their best chance, Lukas wasn't feeling especially eager to let him have the radio again. " Anyone else? " He asked, looking around the group and avoiding the now toothless Nordic cripple. " Don't need to be fluent, just enough to say we need help. "

Dash Dash watched the entire shitshow with varying degrees of amusement and disturbance. Initially he didn’t see much point in following everyone up the hill, like, logically speaking, mostly because didn’t know jack about radios or distress signals or even their flight number. But he did want to be there if they made contact with anyone. So he ambled up near the back of the line, and spent the first few minutes of the hike looking at a cloud in the shape of Marge Simpson’s head, glad that Lukas and JJ seemed to have things covered on the radio front. Douchebag Callum was there too or whatever, he guessed, and Sebastian came through, even if he took his roid rage to the max and punched Eurotrash in the mug over a couple gay jokes. Dash’s lip curled at the blood spat out on the ground. He didn’t really vibe with all the sadistic shit, and he’d take bets that the little guy had half a chub through the whole thing. “Nein, bro,” Dash shook his head. He had maybe a handful of phrases in Spanish and Tagalog in his repertoire at max. And if any anxious fact stuck with him, it was that the battery was on its last legs, so he glanced toward JJ in hopes he could step in ASAP.  He reminded Dash of a guy he went to elementary school with who learned those wack languages from Lord of the Rings for fun and hid under desks to hiss at people as they walked by. Surely he knew some German. “American public schools kinda fell off with the whole foreign language thing.”

JJ As the radio went on, he tried his best to decipher what was being said. His German was rusty at best, mostly based on old philosophical texts he picked up at college. Extending his hand to get the radio back, he’ll rub the top of his brow as he recalls the words. “Hilfe, Hilfe! D-das ist Jacob Sanders. Fünfzehn Menschen am Leben. Privatflugzeug Boeing 12596 kaputt. Wir brauchen hilfe.” He knew the German was butchered, but he believed he’d said the most important things in the process. “Hallo? Kopierst du?” He’ll shift the radio around, trying his best to get the signal.

Warren Warren was tired. His mouth hurt. On top of losing a tooth, one other in his mouth felt loose and he hated it. He didn't really care that they'd made it to the peak, leaving the business of getting into contact with help to whoever had a hard-on for talking to strangers in the group – Mister Moley Man and the smart one. They seemed to have it figured out and he really needed to pee. Besides, with the space at the peak much smaller than where they were before and everyone so excited about it, he felt as though he'd be caught up through overhearing while he tried to take a piss where he was at the back of the group. He was halfway done with his leak when he heard German, making him turn on instinct and accidentally getting piss on shoes. "Agh, nein–" Two quick shakes and he pulled his track pants back up, hopping over to the front. With his bad leg, he had to touch some shoulders on the way so he wouldn't fall over. What the boys didn't know wouldn't hurt them. "Du sprichst Deutsch?" He asked the smart one as he hobbled up. Schlecht, but he left that in his head. Stretching out his hand, he opened and closed his fist a couple of times, asking for the device.

Sawyer Sawyer held up a finger and thumb. "S'German, actually."

Sebastian Sebastian rolled his eyes at the budding discourse, "Which is the same thing- moving on. What did they say?" he gathered the gist of what JJ had relayed back, he's a lesbian, the private flight number, uh whatever else- it didn't matter, Sebastian was pretty sure he'd pretty much stuck to the script. "Does that mean we're near Germany or a country that speaks German? What countries outside of Germany speak German?" he couldn't think of a single one that wasn't landlocked or anything but tropical- no freakin' way they were near Western Europe.

Sawyer Sawyer just looked at him like he felt even worse for him than he did when they found out his middle name was Claude. "Dude."

Dash Dash pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek to fight back a fleeting grin at Sawyer’s emphatic dude. “I dunno dick about who’s speaking German other than the Krauts, but could be a passing ship, right? Maybe we’re in international waters or some shit.”

JJ He looks at Warren and his eyes wonder for a moment if the other is genuinely fluent or just proceeding to be a more persistent human equivalent of hpv. “I speak limited amount.” he answers honestly as Sebastian proceeds to throw in a question which would by all metrics be considered dumb if it wasn’t somewhat valid. Before he can answer, Dash adds to it a more plausible explanation and he’ll nod. “German speaking countries are Germany, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg. German is also an official language in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, but it sounds different. It is highly unlikely we’re close to any of those...” his eyes now on Dash. “It may very well be the case. Any other ideas?”

Liam watched as everyone silently as they freaked out over who may or may not speak german. his anxiety rising with each moment as their chances of rescue started to lessen the more they used up the battery of the radio. he stayed away from the group, off to the side and pulled out his tech deck out of his pocket and started spinning one of the wheels anxiously to try and calm himself down.

Sawyer "Maybe," Sawyer said, leaning in close to the other boys like he was about to tell a secret, "the operator's just bilingual."

Warren "I live in Switzerland, I speak German," he told JJ. To emphasize his point, he stretched out his hand more blatantly. "Give it to me. Or do you want to stay on this island forever?"

JJ Instinctively JJ will look over at Lukas as if to get some type of blessing or permission to pass the radio to the village idiot. Still, he didn’t have any real ownership of the thing so he stretched his hand out, anxiety rising. He was almost certain the other would either send off a message too ridiculous for the other end to decipher or fully throw the thing on the floor just to get his other leg broken and bleed out in the woods. “Go on then. Careful with the antenna...”

Joe Joe's initial relief at hearing a voice on the other side of the radio was dimming as Henry Bowsers but hopefully redeemable starting asking irrelevant questions that made no sense."Pinky's right it's probably a ship. There's no way there's no way there's a hermit nearby that just happens to hack into radio signals." Who the fuck still used radios besides sailors and boy wonder (not that JJ counted he seemed to have swallow an encyclopedia) ? Watching boy wonder hand over the walkietalkie to Warren was an extremely nerve wracking experience."Be careful Warren."

Lukas With only a couple Hebrew words along with his questionable at best English skills Lukas was mainly sitting this conversation out. If it could be called a conversation, mainly it just felt like a lot of bullshit but what else was new on this island. When Warren revealed he could speak German, and they all kind of knew that because of the song he'd sung on the way up the hill, Lukas had to grimace. It was their best chance, so he gave a small nod to JJ as it was passed over. " Remember, flight Boeing 12596. " Again he said the numbers slowly, fingers and toes crossed old gap tooth wouldnt fuck them all over.

Warren Finally, Warren thought as the radio came into contact with his hand. "Danke, wunderkind." That was so drawn out and dramatic. It's not like he's done anything crazy with the radio before. He hopped over and lifted a hand, swatting it in the group's general direction to settle their apparent nerves. Then he pressed the transmit button spoke. "Ja hallo? Kannst du mich hören? Wir sind auf einer Insel gestrandet. Wir brauchen deine Hilfe."

Radio Static noises. "kannst du-" Static noises.

Lukas It's like watching a toddler handle a bomb, Lukas is just waiting for it to fuck them all up big time. But somehow, it doesn't. Not yet at least. He doesn't hear anything that sounds like numbers come out of Warren's mouth but he also knew literally no German at all. When the radio responded he raised his brows, as if the two words the voice said could possibly mean anything useful. " What's going on? Do we need to go higher still? " He asked, because he was like 65% certain the voice had been cut off by the static.

Warren For once, Warren was invested. He shook the walkie slightly and held it against his ear. Then he spoke into it again, thumb on the transmit button. "Ja? Hallo? Hallo? Kannst du mich hören?" He hopped forward a little, perhaps needing to get a little higher. "Yeah, I think so," he answered Lukas. It was a shame. They were at the peak already. But the edge had a slight lift so Warren was going to take the chance. "Hallo?" He tried again. He heard some static, some response in German before the walkie went dead suddenly. "Shit." He shook the thing. Perhaps a little too vigorously. "Hallo??" He turned on the foot he was balancing. "I think it– Ahh!" The ground beneath him crumbled. Warren slipped. Quickly, he used grabbed onto whatever of the edge he could, releasing the walkie from his grasp to do. "Help! Help!"

Sebastian Sebastian had his arms folded tightly across his chest to keep them at bay as he listened to the chatted shift from person to person. It seemed as if everybody had something to say but nobody was saying anything useful to the situation. "We might just be in a dead zone, I mean look at this place- who knows where the next tower is," he explained, worried that there wouldn't be another radio tower or any man-made structure for hundreds and hundreds of miles from where they stood. He heard the crumbling rock before he truly registered what had happened and as the walkie hit the ground, Sebastian reacted to try and catch it, though his efforts were thwarted at the last moment, his attention divided by Warren's shrieking. "Fuck, Warren!" the words spilled from his mouth as he stumbled as close to the edge of the cliff as he could without risking another rockfall. "Bro-" he looked back at the other guys over his shoulder, "What the fuck- do something!" he practically squealed.

Lukas When Warren moved past the bulk of the group, so did Lukas. Eyes on that radio. He really did not think he was gonna care so much about it. " Hey! " He reacted when Warren fucking shook the thing, as if it wasn't already fucking precarious. Moving towards him, more to take the radio off him than pull him away from the edge of the cliff– but then the fucking dude took a dive off it. " Holy shit, " Lukas moved quickly when he fell, he thought he cared about the radio but he didn't even notice Warren had dropped it yet. Instead falling to his knees, scraping skin since the alterations he'd made that morning. Leaning over the edge he reached out his hand to Warren, holding onto stable ground as best as he could, but he was still a fraction too far away. " Grab my fucking hand, dude! "

Sawyer "Fuck-" Disaster struck in such quick succession: the radio, the crumbling peak, Warren--Sawyer's heart fell to his stomach with such force, he felt like he was about to shit it out of his asshole. He raced to the edge of the cliff, grabbing onto Lukas's free arm. "Pull him up, I'll anchor you!"

Sebastian Sebastian's breath caught in his lungs at the sight. Ten minutes ago he'd wanted to slay Warren where he stood and now, the thought of the other male plummeting to his death right before him made Sebastian want to throw up. "Grab his arm, grab each other's arms, lock in," he insisted, certain that Jorts' clammy ass hands were going to just help Warren fall to his death quicker than ever. "Fuck it- grab me," he insisted, wiping his hand and arm on his shirt before grabbing Warren's forearm firmly.

JJ All he could think about was the exact impossibility of seeing the radio again and for a second he thought about stepping on Warrens hand to push him off with it. As he paused to think, the others jumped to help, and he offered a hand to yeh guys as they moved into action. The stability of the cliff was unknown at this point and a dangerous place to be placing weight so he tried his best to focus on the situation at hand as opposed to possible catastrophe.

Warren Sebastian? Sebastian wanted to help him? Warren knew now wasn't the time to be picky. Beggars couldn't be choosers after all when their arms were aching and they were hanging off a cliff. He pictured his 8th grade English teacher's cleavage one last time before throwing all caution to the wind and letting go of his grip on the ledge to hold onto to Sebastian's arm for dear life.

Sawyer The harder Sebastian pulled, the more unstable the ground became. Sawyer's pulse rocketed, heartbeat thundering in his ears as earth crumbled from the very edges of the cliff Warren was dangling from. He whipped around to face the rest of the group--all frozen in various stages of shock and panic--eyes wild: "Guys--"

Dash Dash saw it all happen in slow motion. Warren turned on his foot, then plummeted. One second he was there and in the next he was dangling from the edge like some kind of Wiley Coyote bit. Dash stood frozen, panic seizing his chest. In what world was he equipped for this shit? “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked no one particular, his voice inching up high and reedy with shaky incredulity. He watched as Sebastian, then Lukas, and finally JJ leapt forward to help. “What the cucking shitfuck this is so fucking fucked.” It was Sawyer’s panicky voice that made him take a step forward, half-wondering if he ought to grab a hold of the back of Lukas’ shirt as some kind of useless backup for a second before he finally did it. “Guys — Jesus, the whole thing’s gonna come down.” But what was the alternative? Letting Warren eat shit and die?

Lukas Lukas was willing to admit (to himself) he was fucking grateful Gigantor joined him on the edge of the cliff. Lukas Skinny Arms Tozer was gonna have no hope of pulling Warren up on his own though he actually hadn't thought of that in the moment. He thought he nearly felt his stomach fall out his asshole when Warren made the move to cling to Sebastian's arm. Feeling a tightness on the back of his shirt he took that as a cue to move again, pushing himself back up, on his feet but still crouched by Sebastian and the dangling Swiss. Glancing over his shoulder to see it was Dash that pulled him up, see Lukas knew he got good vibes off that dude. He'd give a proper thanks later but for now he gave an out of breath nod before he looked back to Sebastian. " You got him? " He asked, barely allowing time for an answer before he's looking back to Dash, Sawyer and anyone else that was braving the cliff edge. " Let's pull them up. " He said, trying not to think about the the precarious cliff face everyone was so desperate to point out.

Callum This was all too fucking insane. How was Warren in a near death situation for the second time that day? Not wanting to deal with a dead body on top of trying to survive on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, Callum dove headfirst into the chaos, grabbing onto Dash to give him support because there was no way this skinny fucker could realistically help Warren, Sebastian and Jorts. "Pull 'em up, pull 'em up!" He urged, mentally preparing himself for the energy he was about to exert.

Dash Dash nodded back once toward Lukas and if his thoughts weren’t too preoccupied with the fact that they were all surely about to plummet to their deaths, he might’ve twisted around and mocked Callum’s deep, booming pUlL ‘eM uP pUlL ‘eM uP to his face. The guy’s hand gripped tightly to Dash’s arm though, pretty effectively making extra sure to keep that petty, poorly timed instinct in check—and probably ensuring that he didn’t full-on Kermit over the edge of the cliff, too. Fuckin’ jocks. Dash gritted his teeth; he didn’t know if it was in his head or not, but the ground felt shaky under his feet. He dug his heels in and used his other hand to grab hold of Lukas’ arm to create some kind of human chain, his breath coming fast and shallow, and did his damned best to keep their skulls intact.

Sebastian Sebastian's heart was in his throat as Warren grabbed onto his arms, his grip pinching the skin though he was far, far too drenched in adrenaline to notice the pain. "Come on, come on," he bellowed, urging the other boys to give it all they had, lest both he and Warren tumble over the edge and into the rocky waters below. At least it would be a quick death, he supposed.

JJ Several things have happened in a span of seconds that JJ could not process. First, Warren hanging off a suspiciously strong cliff. Second, Sebastian of all people putting his ass on the like to save the other. He wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. If maybe all the years of shit sleep had caught up to him and he was now stuck in some hallucination limbo making shit up. Either way, he didn’t say anything, he balanced his weight and pulled onto the guy in front of him and prayed to God and Saints and whoever might have been listening, for this to be over soon. — He was still pissed about the radio, pissed that he’d even passed it to the other, pissed that there was no way now to make his phone work either. Not without the parts he used for the antenna.

Liam liam watched in horror as warren grabbed the radio, babbling into it before eventually stepping off the cliff. in the split second between him falling and everyone snapping into action, liam actually though he had falling to his death. and with most things since the crash, he froze yet again. but a second later, he shoved his toy back into his pocket and ran over to everyone else. which he later realized was a bad idea because pain was shooting up his leg as he grabbed on to one of the other guys to help pull the kid up. thankfully the stress of it all, he was able to ignore his own leg and focus on getting warren back on to solid ground.

Blue everything appeared to blue in flashes, the group heading up the cliff, and the chaos when the cliff crumbled. he watched the other spring into action, and took a deep breath to pump himself up. "Get him! Is he okay" He pulled on whatever body parts or clothes he could to help the others, blue felt the solidarity that he felt with his teammates back home. "Is the radio grabbable?" he was sweating, panting, and the desperation was coursing through everyone it seemed. "Save warren. Get the radio. Save Warren. Get the radio." He chanted to himself, pulling along with the rest of the group. "Save. Warren. Get. The. Radio."

Warren With everyone pitching in to help him, it seemed that Warren would live to see another day. His body was yanked up and onto solid ground again thanks to the efforts of Arsch mit Ohren and the rest of the boys hanging onto him. The second he felt firm rock below him, he wriggled as best he as he could past the boys to further in, wanting desperately to put as much distance between himself and ledge as possible. When he felt it was safe, he dropped to the ground and rolled onto his back to stare at the orange sky above. "Heilige Scheiß..." He was breathless, chest heaving up and down rapidly. Never in his life has he felt such a rush. It was a terrible thing to think about but he wondered how much 'near death experiences' would sell for. Thrill seekers like him would surely pay a hefty price. What Warren really should have been thinking about though was the radio, and how it was no longer in his hand and probably in a million little pieces hundreds of feet below them or lost to the waves of the ocean. He had yet to recall the reality he and the boys were in and how dire it was that they got into contact with someone.

Sawyer Sawyer fell back with the rest of the boys into a sweaty, adrenaline-clouded heap, wincing at the harsh impact of solid rock against his elbow. Nobody dared speak for those first fragile seconds, as though the silence was a crumbling cliff and puncturing it with words would cause it all to come tumbling down. This wasn't a game anymore. The isle was no longer a midpoint in their journey, a pit stop on the way to a boys' retreat in Hawaii; it was a living, breathing thing, with the power to swallow any of them whole at a moment's notice. He rolled to his side, dog tags clinking together as he let out a shaky breath: "the radio...fuck are we gonna do now without the radio?"

JJ He falls back and for a moment he just sits there in silence with the rest of them. He will then get back to his feet, wipe his hands and dust his trousers and look over at Sawyer having considered the exact question throughout the conundrum. “Nothing to do. It’s gone, it’s done.” all they could do now is hope that the Germans or whoever the fuck, heard their message and was on the way. Regardless, the sun began to set so he pointed towards the downhill path. “We should head back before it gets dark...”

Lukas Relief of not having to witness Warren's death washed over him, for the second time that day. But it only lasted a moment. Pulling himself free of the cluster of boys that had pulled him back up off the cliff face, he moved back towards the edge, looking over it in hopes of seeing the walkie on a ledge or something. Perfectly in tact and working a dream, ideally. But nothing. All that fucking hard work, and for fucking nothing. He turns back to the group, eyes landing on the culprit and any relief that he was alive long gone. " You fucking moron, fuck's sake, " If Warren had managed to stand before Lukas turned around, he absolutely would have shoved the bastard. Not over the cliff, but at least back to the ground. Seeing as he was still down, Lukas tried to not let the anger build. JJ, who with each passing moment seemed to be closer and closer to having the emotional complexity of Chucky the fucking Doll, made a good point. They should head back before it gets dark. Seeing as he was already up, he offered his hand to help up the guy closest to him (and who was not Warren).

Blue blue accepted lukas' hand, grateful for any assistance the guys had to give. "thank you." his tone was somber, torn between gratitude for jort's work with the radio, and like the others devastation for what they lost. "im sorry." a reflex more than a habit, a conditioning she taught him. the thought of spending another night was unappealing, and with each hour the fantasy of this being a camping trip was disappearing. he moved towards the front of the group. "alright, we did good. I know this wasnt the outcome we wanted, but their was some macgyver inspector gadget shit that was amazing...and out teamwork pulling a man up. Thats the kind of trust we gotta lean into......carry the injured and lets head back. Warren, when your concussion or whatever gets better, we NEED you to tell us what they said."

Dash Gravity proved itself to be a bitch not once, but twice. Warren luckily managed to get back up from the side of the cliff face, but once the tension of holding tightly and pulling released, Dash fell back and into Paul fuckin’ Bunyan behind him. Even with the air knocked out of lungs, he managed to release a hybrid relieved-slash-disbelieving laugh after a moment's silence when any rescue mission for the radio was declared null and void. Because what the fuck. He hoped his elbow at least got one of Callum’s soft spots as he struggled to his feet, clasping onto Lukas’ hand as soon as he let go of Blue’s. “Well that was a total shitshow.” And like, who knew what the lederhosen-looking dickhead was telling the Fuehrer over the line? The u-boats could’ve been well on their way to haul them to some undisclosed lab by morning. He cracked the knuckles of his right hand, his limbs left a little shaky post-adrenaline rush, and shook his head. With a sharp exhale, he edged away from the sudden drop. His heart racketed just looking where Warren had been clinging on. “Yeah, yeah, down before dark, but what’s the punishment for the high crime of nuking what was probably our one chance at direct communication, man?” In a half-assed attempt at fairness, he tacked on: “I know he didn’t like, spike it on purpose here, but.” Cue: womp womp. “Be real. Are we or are we not totally fucked?”

JJ The corner of his lip lifts slightly as Dash asks what the punishment is for the accidental crime of losing their best chance out of this Island. It’s not that he found it particularly amusing, it’s just that he thought punishment was rather obvious. “The punishment is being stuck here.” He will reply simply. “What impacts one of us - impacts us all.” It’s time we start acting like it, he thinks as he shoots a look towards Warren and Sebastian and then down to his hands. “One fucks up, we all fucked up.” Trying to remain positive he will face Dash and start walking further from the edge of the cliff. “Perhaps whoever’s on the other side has got our message. We’ve only been here for little over a day so it’s also possible the search party separate from the radio is underway. We should stick to the beach for now, keep the fire going...as of right now —“ with the radio gone “it’s the best option.”

[ct-rfantennas]

C&T RF Antennas Inc - RHCP polalization Ceramic antenna GPS antenna active antenna passive antenna 28x28mm 25x25mm 20x20mm 18x18mm antenna with IPEX connector 

[bevioletskies]

if i could fly

summary: Scott’s freshman year in college is going like pretty much any other - his roommate is a little eccentric, he has a huge crush on the girl sitting next to him in his bioengineering lecture, and he absolutely can’t stand their professor. Meanwhile, Hope is just wondering when she can have a moment for herself, when to tell Scott that she knows and she feels the same way, and when he’s going to realize that she’s Dr. Pym’s daughter.

a/n: Fic title is from the song If I Could Fly by One Direction because I need to stop picking songs from before 1988. Also, this fic is slightly more of a Hope character study than a Scott/Hope fic, but they're still a very central part of the plot!

word count: 8.1k | ao3

The moment that Scott and Hope met was...memorable, to say the least - Scott practically fell right through the doors of the lecture hall, stumbled over his own feet, and stubbed his toe on the back row of seats. Every last person turned to look at him, because on top of everything else, he was ten minutes late (he blamed Luis for convincing him that he “didn’t need an alarm, man!”).

He sheepishly made his way down the stairs, scanning every row for an empty seat, his heart sinking when he realized the entire hall was at full capacity, save for one seat at the very front. He felt decidedly more optimistic once he laid eyes on the girl who would be sitting next to him. “Sorry,” he whispered, sliding past her to sit down. She merely huffed and waved him off. Good start, Scott, he internally berated himself, and cracked open his textbook, quietly wondering if she already thought he was a completely hopeless case. Everyone went back to their own books and laptops, but he could still feel the professor’s eyes trained on him, judging him in stone-faced silence.

It wasn’t until they took a short break between lecture slides that Scott decided to try for a second first impression; if nothing else, he knew it would help to find an accountability partner for each of his classes (and not one who told him he didn’t need to set an alarm, Luis). “Hey, I’m Scott,” he offered.

The girl turned to look at him, allowing for a far better look at her face - mid-length dark hair, inquisitive brows, and a piercing gaze, her eyes similar in their shade of hazel-green to his. “Hope,” she said shortly, turning back to her screen. “Dr. Pym hates latecomers.”

“Yeah, I figured,” he chuckled sheepishly. “You’ve taken a class with him before?”

An odd smirk formed on her face, a quirk in the corner of her mouth that only intrigued him further. “Sure.”

“I read some pretty bad reviews of him, but he’s the only one who teaches some of the 300-level stuff I need. Wanted to get onto his good side early, but now it might be outta the question,” he continued, undeterred. “Any suggestions?”

“I know it’s bioengineering, but it’s not rocket science. Show up on time, do the readings, study for thirty hours a day. You just might scrape by,” she drawled.

“Well, when you put it like that,” Scott said, leaning back in his seat with a grin. “And while you’re giving advice, where’s the best place to study on campus?”

Hope finally looked at him again, her eyes flickering briefly across his face; he felt like he was being evaluated for something, but what, he couldn’t be quite sure. “Main library, third floor, by the windows. I’m usually there on Sunday mornings by ten, since everyone else is still sleeping.”

He met her gaze, his smile spreading. “Good to know.”

Once class was over, Hope remained in her seat until the entire room was empty, save for Dr. Pym at the front, packing up his things. “Any potential takers, or were you too busy batting your eyelashes at the boy sitting beside you?”

Hope rolled her eyes, shutting her laptop with a snap. “Don’t patronize me, Dad, I can have a life outside of your recruitment program. Why don’t you offer internships like every other CEO-slash-professor?”

“Because I’m not like other CEOs-slash-professors,” Hank insisted; Hope had to choke back her laugh at how absurd he sounded. “What, you think I’m going to stick just any random intern in the Ant-Man suit? No!”

She clicked her tongue dismissively, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder, and began making her way up the stairs to the exit. “If you ask me, Scott seems like the best choice.”

“For me, or for you?” he called. All he got in response was the loud clunk of the doors swinging shut.

Hope was not one to be told what to do, and never had been. She’d been a stubborn child, a stubborn teenager, and despite her parents’ best efforts, became a stubborn young adult. Despite Hope’s best efforts, however, she ended up following in their footsteps anyway, contrary to her bouts of teenage rebellion. She’d gone through her phases of wanting to be a veterinarian, a writer, a martial arts instructor, but ultimately found herself right back in the sciences under the loving tutelage of her genius parents. Still, now that she was in college, or more specifically, the college her parents taught at, she refused to tell people they were related. She had no intention of letting people immediately form opinions of her that she didn’t have control of. It didn’t help that Hank was constantly hovering over her shoulder like he didn’t already keep tabs on her phone’s GPS or put sensors in her car (which he didn’t know that she knew about).

“Can you not let our daughter be a normal student without dragging her into another one of your schemes?” Janet had protested when Hank first brought up his recruitment plans. “Just get an intern, Henry!”

Now, Hope sat at her favorite table in the library, drumming her pencil against its surface, considering all the things her father had told her to look for. Someone clever, hardworking, focused, adaptive. She couldn’t help but scoff at the last attribute he’d asked for - in other words, someone who will listen to you no matter what, Hope had wanted to say. Typical. She wasn’t even sure why Hank was looking for a successor, given that he and Janet had retired from their other lives by the time she was sixteen, but she knew questioning him about it would only lead to another eventual shouting match. Nothing made him happier than finding something to be angry about.

“Hey.” She looked up, both startled and pleased to see Scott smiling back at her. “Fancy seeing you here. Mind if I join you?”

She gestured for him to take the chair across from hers. “Please,” she said, finding his grin infectious and returning it with a small one of her own. “Don’t tell me you’re already having trouble with the material.”

“Dr. Pym sure has some different ideas about what a ‘first week’ looks like,” he sighed, unloading what seemed like the entire contents of his book bag onto the table. “The guy’s smart, but someone’s gotta tell him to relax.” Hope’s brow shot up at the offhand comment - maybe it was a strike against Scott for Hank’s purposes, that he wasn’t capable of meeting his demands. For her purposes, however, anyone who was willing to call out her dad’s...quirks was a person worth getting to know.

She reached across the table for his workbook. “May I?” At his nod, she pulled it towards her, scanning across the pages. “For someone who’s complaining, you seem to know what you’re doing.”

“I like learning about this kind of stuff, it’s just his teaching style. Dude’s gotta lighten up,” Scott shrugged, though his cheeks warmed at her sort-of compliment. “Hey, I never asked, what’re you majoring in?”

“Biochem, minor in commerce,” she replied. “You?”

“Engineering,” he said, taking his workbook back from her. “So I guess we won’t see much of each other outside of some general sciences stuff.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she hummed. They exchanged somewhat shy smiles over the top of her laptop before resuming their work in comfortable, amiable silence.

Later that afternoon, she returned to the family townhouse - situated close to campus, where Hank and Janet (and now Hope) lived while they taught during the fall and spring semesters - with a slight spring in her step, feeling oddly optimistic. Hope had never put too much stock into relationships of any kind, preferring to focus more on herself, but she found Scott charming in a way she wanted to explore further. As for Hank’s intentions -

“Where have you been?”

“Really, Dad? What am I, seven years old?” Hope kicked off her shoes and hung up her jacket in the hall closet, deliberately keeping her back to him. “I was studying at the library, okay? Nothing scandalous.”

“Don’t give me attitude, Hope, it was just a question,” Hank grouched. “You got some time to join me in the lab? I have something to show you.”

“Fine,” she sighed, following him down into the basement suite, which Hank had transformed into a condensed version of his far more advanced laboratory at Pym Technologies. “What’s this about?”

Naturally, he didn’t answer, instead leading her to the back of the room where he kept all of his ant specimens. Hope tapped gently on the glass in greeting, and some of them wriggled their antennae back at her; she smiled, knowing it was really Hank who’d told them to. He then moved to knock on the back wall, a hollow metallic echo resonating back to them. Slowly, it slid open, revealing a glass display case behind it, illuminated so brightly that she could barely make out what was inside.

“Of course you have a secret door - wait, is that...is that a new suit?”

Hope moved closer, all the dry wit in her tone gone, now replaced with wonderment in her eyes as she stared at the unfamiliar suit before her. She could tell by the shape of its chestplate and the width of its hips that it was for a feminine figure, but it didn’t look anything like her mother’s suit. It was a silver-gold unlike Janet’s red; it was sleeker, a little more modern in comparison. She turned to look at her father in disbelief.

Hank smiled. “Congratulations on getting into college, honey.”

Hope let out a quiet gasp, then flung her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. “Dad,” she breathed, tears forming in her eyes. “How long have you been working on this?”

“Long enough,” he said, sounding both world-weary and proud, and he wrapped his arms around her in return. “Hope, that’s why I wanted you to help find my successor. They’re going to be your partner.”

She let go of him and stepped back. “What?”

“I know better than to pick for you,” Hank chuckled, rocking back on his heels. “Made the mistake of trying to tell you which extracurriculars to take when you were younger, and we all know how that turned out. But this is important, Hope. For me, sure, but really, for you.”

She walked back up to the case, splaying her palm open against the glass, still starry-eyed. “Partner,” she repeated.

“So, did you find anyone yet?”

Hope thought back to half an hour ago when she’d left Scott in the library, how easy it had been to work and chat and laugh with him, how she wasn’t quite ready to leave when she did. Then she tried to picture him standing in her father’s lab, the two of them arguing over the schematics of the suit, or the formulas they used, or just anything, really. She internally blanched.

“No, not yet.”

Sunday mornings at the library very quickly became a thing for Hope and Scott, where she stopped being surprised by his arrival (he made a point of promptly being there by ten) and he stopped needing to ask whether he could join her. He soon learned what her coffee order was, too, making a habit of bringing her a drink and a danish or donut, somehow always knowing which one she wanted every single time.

“Good memory,” he had shrugged when she asked him one time how he remembered she’d been craving something cherry-flavored, watching in astonishment as he deposited a small paper bag of a sugar-coated cherry strudel beside her laptop. Her first bite was more satisfying than she expected, trying not to make a show of it while he watched her with a sort of half-smile and a soft twinkle in his eyes.

Even stranger was the first time Hope ever saw Scott outside of the classroom or the library: at the on-campus gym, of all places, circling a punching bag. She took a moment to admire his arms (and silently criticize his footwork) before approaching him. “You really need to work on your form.”

He startled slightly at the sound of her voice, then laughed once he realized it was her. “Yeah, I’m not - I’m more of a runner type of guy, not a boxer. Didn’t know you were here, too.”

“I was over at the weight machines and I thought I saw a familiar face, though more sweaty than I’m used to,” she teased, walking around the bag so they were face-to-face. “I think you could use some advice.”

“You know this stuff?” he asked.

“I’ve been doing martial arts since I was eight,” she replied, shrugging easily.

“Didn’t know that.” He briefly bent to pick up his water bottle and take a long, generous swig; Hope briefly averted her eyes, not wanting to become too fixated on the way his throat moved while he did.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she said instead, gesturing for him to follow her over to the mats. She then came to a standstill in the middle, holding up both of her hands so her palms were facing him. “Gloves off. Show me how to punch.”

“I was in - I mean, I know how to punch,” Scott hedged. She narrowed her eyes at his hesitation. Finally, with a sigh, he got into position, then threw a couple of punches, striking her hands half-heartedly.

“Terrible,” she said, lowering her arms, though she kept her tone light.

“You wanna show me how to - ” Scott let out a noise he wasn’t proud of as Hope knocked him right in the chest. He fell head over heels quite literally, stumbling backward over his own feet. “Oh - ”

“You asked.” Hope put her hands on her hips, smirking at Scott’s half-impressed, half-terrified expression. “Come on, back to work.”

After an hour-long impromptu bootcamp, they were both drenched in sweat and sore to the bone, him far more so than her. On their way to their respective locker rooms, Scott decided to strip off his T-shirt entirely, causing several heads to turn their way. He grinned when he noticed Hope keeping her chin a little too high in the air, her eyes practically glued to the ceiling. “What’s up?”

“No one likes a show-off,” she huffed, disappearing into the women’s showers.

The two of them ended up going to a hole-in-the-wall dive that was about a five-minute drive outside of the university campus, the kind of place that Hope admittedly would have never tried herself, having spent her life going to restaurants with more than one crystal chandelier and waiters that had been calling her “ma’am” since she was five. She remembered sitting between her parents, tugging uncomfortably at the runs in her tights, barely able to follow the conversation happening with the executive or researcher or whoever happened to be their plus one for the night who sat across the table from her, occasionally cooing at her like she was a newborn baby. Scott, meanwhile, looked right at home sitting across from her on a scratched-up booth bench that had certainly seen better days, his arm thrown over the back, his other hand drumming out an offbeat rhythm on the table’s surface. There was a quiet confidence to him that she very much envied, the ease in the slump of his shoulders painting a stark contrast to the tightness in hers.

“So what don’t I know about you?”

Hope was taken aback. “What?”

“You said there’s a lot I don’t know about you, and I can’t not ask after you say something like that,” he chuckled. “Like, what made you do martial arts as a kid? Why’re you majoring in science and minoring in business? What classes have you taken with Dr. Pym?”

She winced a little at the last one. “Why do you want to know?” she asked. “Is it because - ”

“Just curious,” he said, holding up his hands defensively. “But if you don’t wanna tell me, it’s cool. I’ve got my secrets, too.”

“Really, because you seem almost too transparent,” she said dryly. She leaned forward to rest her elbows on the table, then regretted it instantly when she realized how sticky it was. “Martial arts is something my parents thought would be important for me to learn, I want to - ” destined to, more like, she thought “ - work at a scientific research company, and Dr. Pym used to do summer workshops for high school students.”

He nodded slowly, absorbing her words, the words that she knew were half-truths at best, lies of omission at worst. Then: “I’ve been learning how to do close-up magic.”

“What,” she repeated, though flatly this time. He leaned in, his face startlingly close to hers, and she felt his fingers briefly brush against her earlobe before he triumphantly brandished a quarter in her face, his grin impossibly wide.

“I guess it’s not really a secret, but I’m getting pretty good at it,” he said, taking her hand and unfurling her fingers so he could press the coin into her palm. His hands were warm, his fingers unusually calloused for someone who supposedly didn’t work with much more than a keyboard. Hope wanted to ask, but she wasn’t even sure what to ask. She hadn’t exactly forgotten his comment earlier, either, whatever he was going to say before failing spectacularly at punching. Maybe his secrets were like hers - not shameful, exactly, just not something he wanted to talk about yet.

“I’m impressed.” She half-closed her hand around his, then leaned back so she felt like she could breathe again. “So is that just for fun, or...”

“You could say that.” He averted his eyes a little too quickly, finally sliding his hand away, back to his side of the table. “I’m still trying to figure out what kinda stuff I’m into, what I wanna do in like, life. I know, I know, it’s the most...typical college student stuff. But that’s what it’s all about, right? Figuring out who we are?”

“Going to the gym on a regular basis is definitely a good place to start,” she mused. “What else have you been doing?”

“Haven’t really had the chance to do much in the last three or so years,” he said mysteriously, resuming his drumming against the table. “And hey, I could use a personal trainer.”

Before Hope could reply, her phone went off. She glanced at Scott apologetically before looking down at her screen, groaning when she realized who it was. “Dad, I’m - no, I’m out right now, I can’t - I’ll be home - Dad, seriously - ”

While she talked, keeping her voice low and her mouth covered, Scott’s gaze wandered off around at the gaudy posters and neon signs, the leaky ceiling and the rusty window panes, before his eyes went back to her. Her hair was still somewhat damp, her brows were knitted together in clear frustration, and he could see the slight chipping of her fingernails, probably from the rough-and-tumble they’d had earlier. Scott wanted to take her hand again, to find some other magic trick or silly excuse that would allow him to do so without weirding her out. That is, he hoped she wasn’t put off by what he knew was his sometimes strangeness, little things and moments of “immaturity”, as his ex had so nicely called it (and it was nice of her, considering some of the things her current boyfriend had to say about him). He turned away when she started to hang up, certain that his face felt just the slightest bit warmer than it had a moment ago.

“Is he expecting you home right now?” Scott asked once she pocketed her phone. “If you have to go - ”

“I’m just fine where I am,” Hope said shortly, though her expression softened once their eyes met again. “What were you saying about a personal trainer?”

“Well, if you’re up to spending more time with me…” He trailed off, looking at her expectantly.

“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” she teased, grinning. Once more, they found themselves exchanging promising glances, barely breaking eye contact, even when their waiter came around with a plastic basket of oily nachos.

“So, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not - well.”

They were about two months into the semester, with the weather gradually getting colder and crisper, and classes getting progressively harder and deceptively longer. Scott and Hope were bundled in their thickest coats and walking across campus together, coffee and buttery pastries in hand, on their way to Hank’s class. It had become routine for them, to the point where Scott’s roommate teased them every time she dropped by their dorm.

“Hey, Hope,” Luis would say with a knowing grin. Then he’d turn into the room and call, “Scotty, your girl’s here to walk you to class!”, much to Scott’s embarrassment. Ruddy-cheeked, he would always push past Luis and mutter unintelligibly under his breath, then gesture for Hope to follow him far, far away.

“Luis and I actually knew each other before coming here,” Scott said. Strangely enough, he seemed to be avoiding her eyes. “We, uh, we met in jail?”

Hope stopped in her tracks. “Is that a question?” she said shortly, her breath stuck in her throat, fearing the absolute worst. “What were you in for?”

“Theft,” he admitted. She internally exhaled, though she remained wary. “Few months after graduating high school, my girlfriend got pregnant. I was doing an internship at a security company to save up for college, and then, y’know, the baby. All I saw were these guys in nice suits, bragging about vacation homes, golf scores, the usual. But then I heard ‘em talking about screwing over their customers, skimming money from their accounts. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to steal it back. Got caught, dumped, thrown into prison - in that order. I was let out early on good behavior, but if I wanna meet my daughter, my ex says I gotta prove that I’ve changed.”

Hope fiddled with the sleeve of her coffee cup, wearing away at the thin cardboard until the edges began to fray. “...oh.”

“I just didn’t want you to hear about it from someone else,” Scott continued, shooting her a strained smile. “I wanna be there for my daughter, I wanna be a good person. Honest, reliable...all that.”

She cleared her throat, giving him a small smile of her own. “What’s her name?”

“Cassie,” he said quietly.

“That’s a pretty name.” Her eyes dropped to the lid of her coffee cup for a moment, contemplating. “From what I can tell, Scott, you’re already honest. You just need more focus. Once your ex sees that, how badly you want to see Cassie...it’ll happen.”

“I sure hope so,” he said, his eyes softening. “Thanks for, uh, for hearing me out.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

Hank’s class was the usual long-winded lecture, filled with convoluted definitions and complex equations. Near the end, he handed back one of their reports before dismissing them. Hope immediately had to stash hers in her bag the moment she laid eyes on it, realizing he’d written excellent work, proud of you at the top of the front page, right next to her A-grade. Hank had never been one to express sentiment through writing (Janet had once shown Hope the love letters he’d written to her when they were young; they both had a good laugh at his earnest, but ultimately poor attempts), and it made her tear up a little at the last three words. Still, she didn’t want Scott to see. Scott looked confused at her erratic behavior, but merely grinned his easygoing grin and said his goodbyes, once again leaving her alone in the lecture hall with Hank.

“You’re getting pretty close to Lang, aren’t you?” he commented, eyeing her knowingly.

“We’re friends,” she replied tightly. “You don’t have to punish him for whatever imaginary rivalry you’ve got going in your head, by the way. I’ve seen the marks you’ve given him. He’s smarter than you literally give him credit for.”

“You know, I just can’t tell if you want him to be your partner or not,” Hank scoffed. “You’ve told me about his many supposed good qualities - his intelligence, memory, agility - and yet you also tell me you haven’t found anyone - ”

“I just haven’t, okay?” Hope interrupted. “Just - Dad, can you please just let me live my life, separate from yours?”

“Then why did you enroll in the very school that your mother and I work at? Why didn’t you go clear across the country like every other teenager?” Hank retorted, folding his arms across his chest.

“Sometimes, I really don’t know.” With that, Hope turned and stormed out of the lecture hall in a huff, some of her residual childish temper still lingering inside. Hank stood there, staring after her with the same fire in his eyes, simultaneously loving and hating the fact that she’d turned out to be a little too much like him.

Hope found herself spending more time in the gym or Scott’s dorm room than her family’s townhouse as the semester dragged on, avoiding her father’s stern looks and her mother’s placating smiles. She knew she was being immature about the whole ordeal, but it was hard not to feel stifled and cornered into bursts of anger when it seemed like they were constantly sitting on her shoulders. Something about seeing all the other college students going around campus, getting to truly be themselves for the first time, made her burn with a quiet envy she didn’t realize she had.

“I know it sounds like the dumbest thing to complain about, but I’m so sick of my parents always...being there,” Hope admitted one afternoon while she and Scott were sprawled across his tiny bedroom floor, lazily making their way through their homework. After he’d opened up about his time in jail, she wanted to return the favor and tell him more about herself, though she still tried to keep it as vague as possible. “It’s not like I want them gone or anything, but sometimes I wish it was like when I was little, and they’d go on business trips out of the blue. I’d be at home with a sitter for weeks at a time, wondering if they’d ever come back. Now, I...almost want that distance again. Just enough so I don’t feel like I have to live up to something.”

Scott hummed thoughtfully, his head tilted in a way she somehow found more charming than cloying. “Have you told them how you feel? I’m sure they’d wanna know if they were pressuring you, they sound like good parents.”

“If you knew them, you’d know it isn’t that simple,” she sighed.

“Can I? Meet them, I mean,” he added.

She quirked an eyebrow. “And...why do you want to meet my parents, exactly?” Scott could only look at her dumbfoundedly, as if he’d just realized the weight of what he was asking for. Hope smiled, shuffling closer to rest her elbows on top of his knees, her bright-eyed gaze meeting his. “Is it because - ”

Scott kissed her before she could finish her sentence. She let out a startled noise before returning the kiss, pleased that she hadn’t been imagining things, that it wasn’t just her wishful thinking that he’d been offhandedly flirting with her for the past few months.

Knock knock. “Hey, Scotty - ” before either of them had time to react, the door swung open to reveal Luis standing there with a plastic bag overloaded with takeout containers “ - whoa, what’s going on?”

Scott broke the kiss first, shooting her a faux-stern look. “Really, Hope? I thought we were here to study and then you go around kissing me like that, honestly - ”

“You are so full of shit, Scott,” she retorted without missing a beat, half-sighing and half-laughing in exasperation. She moved to gather up her things from around the room, pointedly keeping her back to Luis, who was snickering behind his hand. “I should get going, I promised my mom I’d hang out with her tonight.”

“Wait, I’ll walk you out,” Scott called as she swept past him. He got to his feet and grabbed his room key, then turned to fix Luis with a pointed stare. “Dude.” Luis merely shrugged, chuckling, and sat down at his desk like nothing had happened.

“I mean it, I have to get going,” Hope said, though she was still waiting for Scott while he closed the door behind him. “Mom’s probably waiting for me.”

“Sorry about, y’know, him,” Scott said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. The two of them quickly fell into step like they always did, walking down the hall to the building doors. “I meant it, though. I haven’t really had a relationship with my parents since I got sent to jail, so...it’d be cool to meet yours. And…‘cos of the other thing.”

“Someday,” she hummed noncommittally. “And the ‘other thing’? I’m not sure what you mean. I thought we were here to study.”

“Now who’s full of it?” he grinned, coming to a stop right in front of the exit. He leaned in, his nose brushing against hers; she was the one to close the gap this time. “Have a good time with your mom.”

“Have a good time with your...Luis,” Hope said, smirking in the way he adored, and she disappeared through the doors. Scott stood there for a moment longer just to chuckle to himself, shaking his head in awe, before returning to his room.

Once Hope returned home, she quickly changed into her workout clothes and went down into the other half of the basement suite - the makeshift gym - to find Janet already there, working with the speed bag. It was one of their rare nights alone together since Hank was doing a talk at a conference two towns over. According to a string of text messages he’d sent them both, it was ‘one of the most inane things’ he’d ever done and reportedly made him miss the days of endless bureaucratic SHIELD meetings. “Sorry I’m late,” Hope said by way of greeting.

“That’s alright. You have a good time with Scott?” Janet asked, stopping to grin at her daughter.

“Don’t,” Hope sighed. “I already get enough of that from Dad, I don’t need to hear it from you.”

“Speaking of your father...I told him to stop asking you about that whole partner thing, and...he agreed.” Janet nodded at Hope’s surprised expression. “You don’t need that going on during your very first semester of college. You’ve already got plenty to worry about.”

Hope smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Mom. I don’t want you guys to think I don’t want this, you know I’ve been wanting my own suit my entire life. But...this isn’t just something I can ask of someone out of nowhere. And I need someone who can be my partner, not his. I need time.”

“I know, jellybean,” Janet said, her voice soft. “Even then...you just focus on yourself, alright?”

“Easier said than done,” Hope sighed. “Maybe Dad’s right. Maybe I should’ve just gone to school somewhere else. Make my life my own for a little while instead of getting angry at you both for...well, for being good parents.”

“Oh, Hope…” Janet removed her gloves entirely so she could properly wrap her arms around her daughter, bringing her in for a tight hug. “We are so proud of you already, you have to know that. We don’t need you to be perfect, we just need you to be yourself. And if you need some space so you can do that, take it, okay? No matter what your father says.”

“You know he wouldn’t like it if I left,” Hope chuckled, burrowing her face into Janet’s shoulder. “Both of you would be calling me every single day.”

“We would, wouldn’t we?” Janet chuckled. “But seriously, jellybean, promise me you won’t be worrying about what we think. Let it be about you.”

Hope’s smile broadened, and she stepped back to meet her mother’s gaze, bright and wise and warm. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I will.”

Another week went by, then two, then a few more, and suddenly, it was the day before Scott and Hope’s last final, which happened to be for Hank’s class. They were studying in the library, occasionally looking up to exchange warm smiles before returning to their notes, Scott playfully nudging Hope’s foot underneath the table every now and then, basking in the comfortable silence.

Then: “So, my ex called today.”

Once again, Hope found herself caught by surprise. “Oh?”

“We made a deal,” Scott continued, flipping the page of his textbook, making a point of not lifting his head to meet Hope’s steely-eyed gaze. “If I get at least Bs in all my classes and get a job or an internship or something in the next six months, I can see Cassie as often as I want.”

“That sounds reasonable. You’re getting As in all of your classes, Scott,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s the job thing I’m worried about. You know how hard it is for ex-cons to find work? Especially for a guy who got jail time for messing with his last workplace?” He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “I wanna be responsible, I wanna be there for her, but...I’m basically screwed.”

Hope chewed her bottom lip in deep thought, guilt beginning to settle a little too comfortably in the pit of her stomach. The solution was right there, right in front of her face, while Scott was completely unaware there even was a solution to be had. Part of her wanted to be selfish, to keep Scott to herself, to not let her parents take over yet another aspect of her life. All she could think about was Scott’s irritation with Hank’s personality and Hank’s vitriol for Scott’s...existence. At the same time, considering how things were going, the tip-toeing progression of their relationship that was moving (in her opinion) at just the right pace, he was going to find out eventually, wasn’t he?

“I can get you a position at Pym Technologies,” she finally said, closing her laptop so she could look him straight in the eye. “When can you start?”

“Wait, what? How? Dr. Pym didn’t say anything about internships - ”

“Neither did I. And he’s been looking for a while now, he just didn’t want people to know.”

Scott’s brow furrowed further. “Then...how did you find out about it?”

Hope sucked her breath in between her teeth. “I’m his daughter.”

Scott’s mouth almost comically dropped open, gaping at her like a fish. Just as quickly, his jaw then clicked shut, clenching tight. Hope had never seen his eyes grow so cold; she shivered. “Hope.”

“Scott, I - ”

“Hope,” he repeated. “Come on, why didn’t you tell me? All semester, I’ve been talking so much crap about Dr. Pym, and this whole time you’ve been listening to me, and, and...and lying to me?” She glanced briefly over his shoulder to see students at the other tables beginning to turn and stare at them, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I know it was wrong, okay, and for that, I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But...you have to know why I did it, Scott. I’ve spent my whole life being told that my parents are geniuses, and that I have to live up to those expectations and be one myself. I have to be well-rounded but focused, social but disciplined, all these...things that eventually became too much for me. I’m better at balancing all those things now, but I still wanted just one thing to be my own, and...I wanted it to be you. I didn’t want you to think anything of me because of them, but...I guess I was the only one who didn’t think this through. It was selfish. I was selfish.”

“No, it’s not - ” Scott inhaled sharply, then reached across the table to take her hand and give it a brief squeeze. “ - it’s not selfish, I mean, I get it. I didn’t want you to know about my criminal past for sort of the same reason. First impressions, right? Having all these ideas about a person before you actually get to know them.” He smiled in the sort of crooked way that made her let go of the breath she didn’t realize she was still holding. “So uh, were you serious about that Pym Tech internship thing?”

Hope chuckled, simultaneously burnt out from worry and relieved by Scott’s easygoing acceptance. “Just like that, huh?”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “And at least it explains why Dr. Pym seems to side-eye me more than anyone else. I didn’t think I was doing that bad.”

She smiled, her shoulders finally relaxing, and glanced down briefly to their still-intertwined fingers. “It might be a little more...involved than you might expect, but I think you can handle it. Also, I never said it was an internship.”

Hank’s final went about as smoothly as expected, which was to say it didn’t go smoothly at all. The problem wasn’t the test itself; both Hope and Scott were diligent students with a good understanding of the material, but there was a tension in the lecture hall that hadn’t existed before. Scott took one look at Hank, now having mentally labelled him as Hope’s father, and it made him more nervous than the essay questions ever would.

“Something wrong, Lang? Your eye is twitching,” Hank observed while he distributed the test papers.

Scott gave him an awkward double thumbs-up. “All good here.” His voice was at least an octave higher than its usual pitch. Hope held back her usual eye-roll.

After their exam was over, Scott went back to his dorm room to sleep off his post-finals week exhaustion, but not before giving Hope a brief kiss while Hank was packing up his bag. “Hey, good luck,” he murmured. “You got this.”

Hope squeezed his arm in return, enjoying the fact that she didn’t even have to turn her head to know what Hank’s expression looked like. “I know I do,” she replied quietly, smirking.

The car ride back to their townhouse was silent - for once, Hope had allowed Hank to drive her to and from class instead of taking her own car - save for the college radio station, where the monotonous host droned on about the last stretch of the semester. It was only when they arrived that Hank wordlessly gestured for her to follow him into the basement laboratory. She winced in anticipation of what was to come.

Hank opened the secret wall once more, calling the display case forward, and Hope went to stand by his side. It took her a moment to realize there was another mannequin on the other side of the glass, this one donning a masculine suit with similar design lines and detailing to match hers, but rendered in her father’s preferred red-and-black color scheme. Goosebumps went up her arms as she stepped closer, the glass sliding open so she could gently run the tips of her fingers across the material of her own suit. It was then that she could truly feel how solid it was, how real her childhood fantasy had become. “So...what do you think?”

She turned to look at him. “They look amazing, Dad. But I really need to talk to you about something.”

“So do I,” Hank sighed, sinking down into his chair. “Hope, I...realize that I may have been pushy about you finding someone to work with. I know we’re not exactly on the same page about the progress of your...let’s call it your career, shall we?”

Hope smiled. “Let’s. And I know that you and Mom mean well, and I don’t want you thinking I’m not grateful for everything you guys have done for me. But...I don’t want to end up resenting you both for making my life fit into yours.”

“We just want what’s best for you, Hope,” Hank protested. “And you’ve proven yourself over and over again. It’s why I made the suit.”

“I get that.” She sat down in the chair opposite him, reaching across to rest her hand on his knee. “I’d just like it if my life was my own sometimes, or else I’m going to be left wanting. Wondering what it could be like.”

He went silent for a moment, contemplating. Then, he placed his hand over hers. “You know I’m no good at this kind of thing,” he said gruffly. “But tell me what we can do.”

“Trust me?” It came out more of a question than a statement. She cleared her throat. “And I mean really trust me to make my own choices.”

“I do,” Hank said automatically. When Hope fixed him with a look, he also coughed, leaning back into his seat. “More than you think. And if this is about your taste in partners - ”

“ - I don’t need to explain myself to you,” she interrupted, her voice hard. “I’m not a child anymore, Dad. If I bring him here to put on the suit and train with me, I need you to respect him and our relationship.”

He held up his hands in defeat. “Alright, alright, I hear you. But I’m glad to hear you’ve made your decision.”

“I wanted to keep him away from you,” she admitted, finally withdrawing her hand. “I wanted my college experience to be just like anyone else’s, and I didn’t want to pull him into our world when he’s been one of the most normal things about my world that I’ve ever had. But I would’ve just been delaying the inevitable, and...I really want to put on that suit.”

Hank laughed, getting to his feet and gesturing for her to follow. “I know you do. Why do you think I’ve been working on it for so long?” Hope smiled, standing as well and moving to wrap her arms around him. He hugged her in return, pressing a kiss into her forehead. “You’re really running things around here these days, aren’t you? Just like your mother. Too damn clever and stubborn for your own good.”

“Always,” Hope replied, grinning.

“Is the blindfold really necessary? I feel like I’m gonna trip.” As if on cue, Scott’s foot slipped out from under him; Hope caught him by the waist before he could fall any further.

“Dad’s the kind of paranoid who thinks the neighbors steal our mail, do you really think he’d be okay with you entering his lab without one?” she drawled, straightening him up. “Just a few more steps.”

Once they reached the bottom, Hope briefly let go to type in the code on the door’s keypad, her heart thumping wildly against her ribcage with anticipation. The door slid open to reveal Hank and Janet sitting by one of the worktables, poring over blueprints for a new model of the quantum tunnel. They both looked up at the sound of Scott and Hope’s footsteps.

Hope helped Scott remove his blindfold, watching him blink blearily into the light, squinting, before his eyes landed on her parents. He blanched slightly. “Dr. Pym...Miss Van Dyne, it’s so nice to meet you.” He held out his hand to shake, though he nearly tripped over his own feet in doing so. Hope nudged him upright with her shoulder. “Hope talks about you all the time.”

“All good things, I assume,” Janet beamed, getting to her feet so she could return the gesture. “She’s briefed you on what’s going on around here, right?”

“NDA and all,” Scott said, laughing awkwardly. “I also read up about you guys after she told me. Really impressive stuff.”

“I hope it wasn’t just my reviews on that professor rating website,” Hank grouched, though he motioned for them to join him at the display case, which had remained in full view since his conversation with Hope from a few days ago. It was the weekend after exam week was over, and the Pym-Van Dynes had spent the last couple of days mulling over Hope’s decision, weighing the pros and cons of bringing, in Hank’s words, an “inexperienced civilian” into their fold, eventually agreeing that a quick background check, typical of any normal employer, would do the job (Hope drew the line at trying to contact his family as references, though; she got the impression that his parents would have nothing but thinly-veiled insults to offer). Scott had spent the last couple of days sleeping.

“Oh, wow…” Scott was speechless as he approached the glass, his starry-eyed expression reminiscent of Hope’s. “This is so cool. It’s like a, a motorcycle suit or something.”

“It’s not - ” Hank cut himself off with a huff. “It’s for you, Scott.”

“Really?” Scott turned to look at Hank. “Can I try it on?”

“Not yet, we have to measure you and make some adjustments,” Janet piped up, pointing toward a small platform for him to stand on. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Scott grinned, hopping up with all the enthusiasm of a child getting to try on their Halloween costume for the first time. Janet went to grab her measuring tape and tablet, while Hope smiled up at Scott, the discomfort in her stomach slowly ebbing away. Hank still looked as sour as ever, but Hope spotted a twitch in the corner of his mouth that suggested maybe, just maybe, this was going to work.

A few hours later, after Hank and Janet had rattled through what Hank called the introductory course to, among other things, Pym Particles and the Ant-Man suit, Scott and Hope sat on the living room couch together, watching a movie, while they waited for her parents to finish preparing dinner for the four of them.

Hope soon noticed Scott seemed to be sending off a series of texts, though she bit her tongue before her curiosity could get the best of her. “Thank you,” she murmured instead, gently prodding his leg with her toe.

“Of course,” he said, immediately pocketing his phone. He turned to fully face her and propped his elbow up on the back of the couch, tilting his head down somewhat so their foreheads brushed. “Hey, this is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. This is gonna be awesome.”

“I’m glad it’s that simple for you,” she replied, mirroring his movements; their elbows met in the middle. “It’s going to be a lot of work, Scott.”

“I know,” he shrugged. “But it feels like the right thing to do. I really needed this, after all the crap that’s gone wrong in my life. A chance to prove myself.”

“You’ll have plenty,” she promised. Then, she couldn’t help herself, finding her gaze flickering to his phone; she could see its screen lighting up over and over again, silently chiming in with more notifications. “What’s going on there?”

“Maggie, my ex,” Scott said, sitting up so he could pull it out of his pocket. “I told her I got a job, she’s been bugging me with questions ever since. Told her I’d tell her more later, once your dad gets me up to speed on what I can and can’t tell people.” His grin broadened. “She did send me a couple pictures of Cassie, though. Wanna see?”

Hope nodded almost shyly, her heart melting when Scott turned the screen in her direction. “Oh, Scott, she’s adorable.” It was a series of photos of a little three-year-old girl in a high chair with the biggest, roundest brown eyes Hope had ever seen, grinning toothily at the camera, the majority of her face covered in chocolate cake. “It’s a good reminder - you’re doing this for her.”

“And for me,” he added, tucking his phone away. “And...a little bit for you.”

“Is that so?” she teased, leaning in closer once more. “Just a little bit?”

“Teeny...tiny...ant-sized bit,” Scott whispered, bringing his mouth to hers. Hope groaned, though both of them shook a little with silent laughter as she pulled him in closer, winding her arms around him until their legs were fully intertwined, him pressing her into the couch. Much to Hank’s chagrin, she barely moved to break the kiss when he entered the room and cleared his throat.

“When you two are finished, dinner’s ready,” he said tightly, then turned on his heel and walked right back into the dining room. Hope finally pulled away so she could laugh into Scott’s shoulder, delighting in how pink his face had gotten (though he didn’t look too ashamed of himself, either). Yes, it was more than a maybe; things were going to be just fine.

a/n: I love a good ol' college AU, and getting to do some character exploration of what Hope would be like if her parents were around for her entire adolesence was pretty interesting! And, of course, writing overly-confident, kinda-awkward flirting between these two is one of my favorite things about the Scott/Hope dynamic. I think I'm starting to get the hang of the Ant-fam's characterization?

Thanks so much for reading, likes and reblogs would be much appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed :)

[cyb-by-lang]

Shell Game (14/?)

Kei and friends do some field work.

While wearing her ANBU outfit, Kei took the train to Hosu on Tuesday night. Not openly—once again, the Transformation jutsu was earning its keep—but she disappeared into back alleys and dark corners as soon as she could get away from the crowds. Skittering up brick or concrete walls like some kind of malformed frog honestly felt like a return to form. Almost like slipping on an old, well-loved sweater, though the armored uniform wasn’t acquainted with sleeves as such.

Still, standing on a roof, in the middle of a real city with real skyscrapers, kind of made her feel like Batman. Hosu was no art deco nightmare, but Kei hardly needed a gargoyle to dangle from. She had a whole skyline and plenty of air conditioning units.

The air split open on her lonely rooftop, and two similarly-uniformed shapes tumbled out in front of Kei.

It was kind of funny how much “tech” was being sneaked back into Konoha through Obito’s constant prowling. In much the same way as a tourist buying up crap for resale didn’t make waves, Obito’s half of the discretionary budget was mainly materials nobody in Tokyo cared much about. His penchant for disguises and vocal mimicry meant he could go anywhere, be anyone, and buy his own weight in kevlar.

Kei already saw the first results of that exploration when she took a look at Kakashi’s ANBU uniform. His armguards were different from Obito’s or Kei’s, even leaving aside how Kei had taken her personal pair from home. Lighter, somehow. Tight black material flattened his white hair to his head, leaving him nearly anonymous. His light gray vest settled differently against his body, betraying anti-stab armor under the cloth. Interlocking plates, apparently.

And no more open-toed shoes.

Konoha learned fast.

“Crane, Wolf, welcome to Hosu,” Kei said, while her teammates sorted themselves out.

“It stinks of smoke,” Kakashi commented almost immediately, and Kei didn’t blame him. City air was just weird after growing up in Konoha. Even the largest cities in the Land of Fire didn’t have fossil fuel dependency anything like this. His wolf mask and the skintight one underneath didn’t filter that much.

Obito patted his shoulder before quickly being brushed off. “You get used to it.”

Kakashi grunted, then his mask angled toward Kei. His left eye-slit gleamed red. “Any patrol rules, Turtle?”

“Avoid everyone.” Kei adjusted her Isobu-patterned mask for a second, just to fidget, then added, “Treat it like infiltrating Suna. The second an alarm goes up, ditch.”

“Easy enough,” Obito remarked, and Kei gave him a sharp look he ignored. The right eye-hole on his mask was also faintly glowing.

“Take the lead,” Kakashi prompted, and the three of them made their way through Hosu’s backstreets.

Though Kei hadn’t really explored this chunk of Tokyo with any intent last time, she’d been reading newspapers and checking maps in her spare time. She knew where major landmarks were, broadly speaking, and heading back to the apartment after this patrol exercise wouldn’t be difficult. If Hosu was known for anything, at the moment, it was a minor rise in violent crime.

Heroes were dying and that had everyone worried.

Kei wasn’t emotionally invested in the hero scene the way the locals were. Whenever caught up in a dangerous situation, Kei tended to rely on her own power first and only look to fellow shinobi after everything progressed past the point of no return. The idea that she could be saved by a hero, paid by the Japanese government to do good, was still a foreign one. Her experience at the USJ did show her the value of heroes as symbols of hope, at least once Obito and other people filled her in on how everyone reacted to All Might popping into the building. However, her concern about the Hero Killer had more to do with the fact that he was a serial killer than anything to do with who he was targeting.

Still, the principal had asked for a quick check-in, and here Kei was. Poking Hosu with reinforcements and a stick to see if the hornets were awake.

And we cannot even justify killing a multiple-murderer if he becomes too much of a threat to contain.

Kei slid down the outside wall of a nightclub, feeling heavy bass rumble up through her gloved fingertips. Law enforcement doesn’t work the same way here.

Of course it does not. Humans in this world depend so heavily on their technology and their heroes that they have made their world safe. Isobu growled in frustration, tails lashing around in the mindscape.

We’ve had this talk before, Isobu. Besides, from what the survivors have said? He’s not exactly in a jinchūriki’s weight class.

Barely anyone ever is.

Kei let him have the last word. Instead, she held a hand up as soon as she heard a sound around the corner of a roof, feeling her teammates freeze before making any extra noise. Kei crept closer to the edge, channeling chakra carefully toward her ears and concentrating on what she was hearing.

Across from her, Kakashi made several hand signals. Fire. Man. He paused for a second to listen to the same footsteps Kei heard, then added, Big.

Obito signed a question and Kakashi shook his head. Probably asking how big, but the angle wasn’t the best and Kei didn’t like splitting her attention.

“Nothing, again. Heading back now.”

Heroes patrolled, too. Just their bad luck that, when Kei poked her head up just before the man walked of easy view, she recognized Endeavor’s hulking frame. Of all the people who “Big, uses fire, and is a man” fit, the Number Two of all Japan’s heroes was a rather unfortunate find. His Quirk was called Hellfire, and Kei had seen footage of him channeling so much heat through his limbs that he could melt handholds into nominally-solid concrete.

Kei signalled a retreat. Her boys followed her for almost ten blocks before she stopped on a somewhat taller rooftop, crowded with ventilation units, ducts, and antennae.

“Endeavor’s not stationed here normally,” Kei said quietly, retrieving her phone from a pocket. She fiddled with it until she brought up Endeavor’s profile on some official site or other. Probably his. Then she handed her phone to Kakashi. “Stain really must be causing a panic.”

Obito hung back, Sharingan bright behind his mask as he kept alert, and Kakashi settled next to Kei’s left side.

“If a man with his face on fire wants to catch a killer,” Kakashi said after scanning the somewhat-dim screen, “he’s welcome to him. But for him to be here? Those unsuccessful hunts must really be burning him up inside.”

Obito muttered something uncharitable about puns.

Kei shoved Kakashi’s shoulder playfully and snatched her phone back. “We’ll poke around a little longer.”

Truthfully, the patrol didn’t turn up much despite GPS help and rumor-chasing. While Kakashi was primed to detect blood, city scents were overwhelming on a good day. The trio did find an old bloodstain outlined by police tape and blocked by a patrol car, but it appeared the Hero Killer didn’t actually hunt every night. He was an asshole, a murderer, and probably equipped with a dangerous Quirk if he’d managed to overpower so many pro heroes already. But he wasn’t, apparently, all that easy to find.

Besides, cigarette smoke got really bad around crime scenes. Kakashi had signed a No when asked if he could detect anything past that kind of interference. If he’d been a little less disciplined, Kei imagined he might’ve had more to say. Most of it rude.

“One more pass,” Kei said, and they hopped to it.

Between Kei’s phone and Obito’s, as well as Obito’s street-level knowledge of some of the familiar heroes who operated in the area, they managed to make a game out of spotting familiar faces. Fin-helmeted Manual, the Normal Hero, patrolled more during the daytime and seemed to be about in the same weight class as the bank robber from the weekend. Kei managed to find another hero, apparently called Native, whose costume and lack of any notable Quirk just made all three of them scratch their heads.

Well, Obito and Kei did. Kakashi didn’t know or care enough.

Most of the heroes who operated in Hosu, including famous Team Idaten—run by Ingenium and his sidekicks—seemed to be pretty secure in their positions. Maybe that was why Stain kept picking them off, because she couldn’t quite see someone higher on the hero lists getting axed by someone whose modus operandi relied heavily on ambushes. A lot of the higher-ranking heroes were there for power and skill, not just popularity.

“You know, I’m not really seeing anyone who could, like, go toe to toe with us.” Obito commented after they’d passed by a hero patrol. Moving across the city three stories up from ground level had a way of keeping them out of trouble. For now. “Maybe that Endeavor guy. But all of their Quirks are public. Does no one ever do thought exercises about that kind of thing? I mean, you fought Sensei and if you’d been anybody else he’d’ve flattened you inside of four seconds.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Kei replied. The fact that she, better than almost anyone bar Kushina or Jiraiya, knew all of Namikaze Minato’s jutsu and his preferred fighting styles meant she’d been probably in a unique position during their spar. The idea of anybody else getting that close was a disturbing one.

There was kind of a reason it was illegal to teach non-shinobi the majority of their techniques. Shinobi from other villages, too.

Maybe that lopsided information was also why underground heroes were a thing.

After a few more rooftops, Kakashi remarked, “Maybe that’s why the firebug is here.”

Obito cartwheeled instead of landing normally as they crossed another roof. “You think?”

“Probably. But he’s having the same trouble we are.” As all three of them slowed to a stop on top of what appeared to be a four-story apartment building, Kakashi went on, “I’m willing to assume that this person we’re looking for is notorious. Distinctive to the point of having a fanclub, apparently. But I don’t think that we’re the first ones with detection abilities who’ve been called in to try and find him. He might genuinely not be here at the moment.”

Kei glanced across the way, toward the nearest train station. She scratched under the edge of her mask, recalling the discussion she’d had with Hayate about technology. Mass transit was a curse sometimes. “You’re probably right. And if he took a train, he could be anywhere by now.”

“There’s probably a way to track him with local methods, but those aren’t workable from our positions.” Kakashi tilted his head back to check the angle of the moon, or perhaps just out of curiosity. Then, “This patrol is effectively over.”

A disappointing result for Team Minato’s first reunion patrol, but there it was.

“I wish we had other agents to hand this off to,” Obito complained, as they changed into more civilian-friendly clothes inside Kamui. The pocket dimension’s obsession with white, squared-off blocks and bizarre lighting meant finding their clothing stashes was a cinch even without Obito’s help. “It feels like we’re leaving a job half-finished.”

“That’s what heroes are for,” Kei told him. Then her head finally popped out of her sweater collar and she started fussing with the neckline and sleeves. Really, throwing on street clothes over her uniform was a bit lazy, but there wasn’t anyone around to criticise her fashion choices. “And a police department. Though I don’t know how much headway they’re gonna make.”

“Not our jurisdiction.” Kakashi reappeared from behind a distant pillar, sporting a cheap medical mask with ear loops. His black turtleneck and jeans were like Tokyo versions of his jōnin uniform. Perhaps not wanting to match Obito, he’d just styled his unruly hair down over his left eye and omitted the eyepatch. When he noticed the other two staring at him, he said, “I’m not due back for another eighteen hours.”

“Oh, oh!” Obito bounced over to his teammates, grinning. “Kakashi, this place has so much weird stuff. It’s great!”

Kakashi blinked slowly at him. There was a slight edge of dawning dread in what Kei could see of his expression. His chakra flickered slightly. Then he managed to say in an even voice, “Such as?”

Obito and Kei grinned at each other. Kakashi was the newbie here.

Kei said, “Well, I know you like the Icha-Icha series, but there are like a million more options here. And there’s about five thousand types of manga. We need to hit up a bookstore, now.”

“Akihabara?” Obito suggested, his Sharingan shifting to its Mangekyō form. He’d been around Tokyo a few times by now, since he didn’t need to actually attend school.

Kei gave him a Gai-style thumbs-up. “Definitely! It’s not past curfew yet.”

“This place has a curfew,” Kakashi repeated incredulously.

“Just transform into Raidō or something if it ends up being a problem,” Kei suggested as Obito held out a hand, swirling vortex in the middle of his palm. “Anybody older than eighteenish. Twenty, maybe?”

Kakashi waited until Obito had neatly deposited them in an abandoned side-street to answer, “I think I’m fine for now.”

“Good!” Kei ushered them out into the street. “Now, let’s go find the bookstore. There has to be one still open.”

In the end, Kakashi got a new three-part romance series from a writer who obviously published under a pseudonym and a pair of truly terrible joke books. Obito bought a tourist’s guide to Tokyo and a multipack of study aids (sticky notes, highlighters, and so on), just before spotting a novel about Yoshitsune and snatching it up, too.

Kei didn’t buy anything, but she did have both of them stay overnight.

While they were sleeping, Kakashi somehow stole the comforter he’d been sharing with Obito, Obito cuddled up to Kakashi like he was some kind of pillow, and Kei woke up with her head propped up on Kakashi’s side and a crick in her neck. And none of them got up before Kei’s alarm clock.

Some things never changed.

[ju23ly]

9 Greatest Radar Detector For Android smart phone

 You'll never be caught by velocity cameras using this GPS radar detector This software is used to detect hazards on the road, reminiscent of speed cameras (cellular ambush, static pace cameras, purple light cameras), pace bumps, bad roads and and so on.

 In addition to the attention-grabbing exterior development and colour scheme, this detector is without doubt one of the best efficiency detectors you can get on http://get10best.com/best-radar-detectors/, inside this value vary. Initially the one state that does not permit radar detectors is simply different place is d.c. The Spectre is a radar detector detector used by police in Virginia, which is able to detect over ninety five% of the radar detectors being offered at this time.

With so many components to contemplate when in search of a radar detector that is finest for your needs, it's important to do as much research as you may to make an knowledgeable choice. The Radar Detector is among the most helpful gadgets for many who are travelling in their automotive at excessive speed.

Comparaboo has a really useful shopping for guide in addition to a constantly up to date 10 Greatest Radar Detectors checklist that I might suggest you or anybody else check out  for data on picking up a new radar or laser detector. We don't sell radar detectors, Veil producers a police laser and IR photo enforcement countermeasure that can be effectively used with them.

In all probability the most effective radar detectors we have reviewed which have such good GPS know-how. All these options are mixed with an eleven+ mile radar detection score, supplying you with the features you want with the accuracy you need. Numerous other features like Speed-mute, Auto-mute mode, Quiet-drive, Auto-Metropolis and TFS rejection assist in eliminating false alerts.

It delivers a powerful excessive efficiency radar detection with digital signal processing (DSP). Then it's going to retailer these locations to make sure that false alerts don't occur when driving by them once more. The Max 360 provides 5 ranges of sensitivity, again, greater than any other detector available on the market.

Be taught one of the best radar detectors in our evaluations. As a part of the factors to think about in choosing your greatest radar detector, sensitivity is rather more necessary. You too can join your device to your smartphone by Bluetooth, which supplies you access to the Escort Stay app (which can display the speed limit of the highway you might be currently driving on in actual-time).

One other glorious function is that it's invisible to almost all radar detector detectors (RDD), together with the VG-2 and Spectre. This can be a very straightforward-to-use model that detects radar and laser units. Before you purchase a radar detector, it is very important contemplate quite a lot of elements.

Even with the ability twine unplugged, this radar detector will proceed to carry out. Selecting the best radar detector that has a twin radar antenna is at all times higher as they've two antennas one in the entrance and the opposite at the back. Besides the Valentine One and the above Escort models, the one other producer of $500 detectors is Beltronics.

It comes actual close to the amazing efficiency of Valentine One in detecting police laser, making it probably the most capable detector in terms of laser detection, over those from Escort and Beltronics in the beneath $300 value vary. This may make the device a little annoying at occasions and can forestall a user from figuring out when a brand new alert has been detected.

When the officer shoots your rabbit to seize their velocity your detector will warn you to decelerate. Do you assume there are higher radar detectors for lower than $one hundred? Different radar detector installations is commonly as advanced as getting the whole vehicle wired throughout.

Even with the best radar detector, it is probably not enough to warrant a save against a laser speed trap. Appears to me like evading rushing tickets by using a radar detector is a parasitic and expensive drag on the rest of society. To save money on supply charges, attempt to purchase the radar detector from a vendor situated in your space.

Until not too long ago (sooner than 2018), shopping for a easy radar detector was enough, but police has new instruments for scanning when you're driving previous velocity limit. Make no mistake about it though, the corporate invests in expertise, and their radar detectors can identify the all of the police radar bands both on the highway and the streets.

Buying a radar detector on eBay is easy due to the multitude of gadgets made accessible on the web site by a vast array of sellers. There's no want to worry regarding unfavourable police conduct once utilizing it as amongst its competitors, it's one among the many best and needs to be really the best police measuring system detector on the market.

When a detector picks up radar waves that come from speed-detection devices (whether it's man-operated like on radar gun, or automatic like on a red-mild camera), it notifies the driver (usually within the type of an audible alert). These are additionally referred to as windshield-mounted detectors, primarily as a result of they cling on your vehicle's window via a suction cup.

The Radenso XP detector is also GPS enabled. The most effective radar detectors are at finest preventative measures to economize. The Whistler CR90's robotic voice gives more detailed data than most other detectors. There are two fundamental types of detectors being utilized in these devices at present, primarily based on what they will detect.

WARNING: Beneath is a list of right now's greatest performing, greatest worth, and actually undetectable radar detectors. In case you occurred to be dashing, your detector will just provide you with a courtesy warning that you will be paying a nice high-quality. It features a rear radar antenna to increase the realm of the radar detection system.

Whether you are on the freeway or within the metropolis, the most recent radar detectors come equipped with app compatibility, new customization options, and an extended vary than older fashions. It has an precise backlit HD display and three settings of brightness for simple data studying, making it the best radar detector when it comes to show.

Good thing that there are radar detectors for that. Auto, highway and metropolis mode are available, which allows the S3 to find out the suitable vary to identify threats and cut back false alerts. Unlike cars which have quantifiable measurements we will examine like top speeds or zero-60 occasions, we do not have the same issues for radar detector range.

This know-how permits the gadget to display as much as nine indicators, along with their strengths concurrently. One of the best radar detector proper now could be the Escort Redline, rating as best overall in our record when it comes to biggest variety. Outfitted with Bluetooth know-how, the Escort Passport Max 2 supplies an enhanced vary and accuracy.

An accelerometer disables the radar detector while you're driving slowly or your car is just not transferring since you don't have to fret about radar guns. You won't have to worry about your speed you probably have this radar detector in your automotive. For those who're driving with a Valentine One, an Escort 9500ix, or a Beltronics STiR Plus, you can also make it display on a Basic Motors automotive's head-up dashboard and instrument panel show.

[sharengayonline]

Amazon.com : BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB 7″ Multi-Touch Tablet PC with 1 GHz Dual-Core Processor, 5MP Camera and Secondary 3MP Camera, Video, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – Black : Tablet Computers : Computers & Accessories

Sharengay Trang Tin Tức Độc Đáo VIDEO Amazon.com : BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB 7″ Multi-Touch Tablet PC with 1 GHz Dual-Core Processor, 5MP Camera and Secondary 3MP Camera, Video, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – Black : Tablet Computers : Computers & Accessories

Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

Bạn đang xem: Amazon.com : BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB 7″ Multi-Touch Tablet PC with 1 GHz Dual-Core Processor, 5MP Camera and Secondary 3MP Camera, Video, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – Black : Tablet Computers : Computers & Accessories

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2017

Size: 32 GBVerified Purchase

A BlackBerry tablet seems like an odd purchase in 2017, but I did my homework and knew I wasn’t getting an iPad Air. I was getting this tablet for work – Spreadsheets, Word Docs and hopefully use the Bible app. The price was manageable and I figured that even if it turns out to be obsolete, I can still use it as a music player in our kitchen or something. Well, I was pleasantly surprised by this little tablet. The OS is brilliant. It’s such a joy and ease for multi-tasking. I was able to get my spreadsheets on it immediately and use it to check my messages and keep my calendar. The Bible app works flawlessly. Yes, the tablet is a little slow, but it’s a 2011 tablet, it’s to be expected. Yes, it doesn’t have a huge cache of apps to choose from, but the apps available are quality. I even found some fun games with great graphics. My music is fully loaded and the speakers are fantastic. I even tried taking a few pics and the quality is impressive! It’s not great for social media. Facebook is functional but not great. Instagram and Netflix simply won’t work on this tablet. You can go the Instagram website and at least view pictures, but that’s all. I did manage to get YouTube working with an browser I downloaded from BlackBerry World called “Frost”. Just go to the YouTube web page and it works great. It let me sign in, but I had to re-sign in every time I opened it. But when the videos play on YouTube, you can leave the app and the video keeps playing – very cool! I also have a BlackBerry Passport phone and it lets me sync with it and my Playbook to text and send BBMs. If you’re willing to put in a little work and do some research, you can get some current Android apps working on this thing. I have Evernote, Kindle, and even a version of Google Maps working. Again, do not expect this tablet to be everything the current tablets are, but if you want to spend very little and get a functional tablet that can serve a few purposes well, give this a look. The best things about this Tablet is the multi-tasking feature, the Messaging inbox, the speakers, the quality of the screen and the price. The negatives are a lack of apps and the general slowness. Hope this helps someone!

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2015

Verified Purchase

The Blackberry Playbook Tablet isn’t for those hardcore iPad and Android people. In fact, I would not recommend you buy this tablet if that is the kind of person you are. This tablet is almost like a beginning step into the world of tablets. You get plenty of memory on the tablet for a price lower than any other competitor offer, but there is good reason for that. For one, this tablet is older than these fancy tablets that we see nowadays, so the specs aren’t as hot. There is Bluetooth, but if you have an iPhone or Android or just anything that isn’t a Blackberry, your phone is not going to interact with this tablet other than giving it data. It CAN’T support file sharing like pictures or music through Bluetooth, but you can plug it into your computer to upload files onto it. Apps are not exact the strong suite of the Playbook either. It has a more limited version of the Blackberry World for the Blackberry phones, so don’t expect all the top of the line games and apps to be on here, through there are a few here and there. I would suggest this tablet to people who want to do some basic browsing on the web, check facebook, and just relax while on the go. I wouldn’t say it is a bad tablet for getting your work done, but I don’t think this is the tablet you should be relying on.

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2012

Size: 16 GBVerified Purchase

I love this thing!

—– (update) —— Tip to improve WiFi reception

The 2.4 Ghz WiFi antenna is in the upper left hand corner in landscape orientation. Wrapping your hand around this corner to hold Playbook, as I like to do, reduces WiFi signal strength a lot (a bar or two, factor of x100 or 20 dbm), which can be the difference between getting online or not when traveling. A simple trick to get good WiFi reception while still holding Playbook with the left hand is just flip the Playbook over so the ‘Blackberry’ logo is on top. This puts the most commonly used 2.4 Ghz WiFi antenna on the right.

Check out the ‘SANOXY Bluethooth Keyboard for iPad’. It’s a very inexpensive bluetooth keyboard that works fine with Playbook. ————— 7″ screen size is fine, sharp as a tack (viewed with reading lens of bifocals), bright and colorful, sound good, screen responsive to touch. Swipes easy to learn.

On browser homepage On my desktop browsers I have all my frequently visited links in a single custom .html file that I set as my homepage. To me a custom .html homepage is essential, it makes bouncing around the web fast and easy. I first tried copying my custom .html file into the ‘Document’ folder, but found it was not visible under ‘Document’ icon, but later going backdoor I got it installed as the browser homepage. Here’s the procedure:

Type into browser: file:///accounts/1000/shared (note 3 ///)

This brings up a simple file manager that allows you to see what files are in memory and even to launch them. In the Document folder was my custom html homepage file, which I had earlier copied over via USB. Tapping the filename loaded it into the browser, and holding my finger on it allowed me to copy the filename (via the copy box). Finally going into the browser settings I was able to paste the filename into the homepage window. Now every time I start the browser up comes my custom homepage.

Another neat trick is to have alternate start links for the browser on your home screen. This is done by clicking the star+ button and selecting add to home screen. For example I have a icon that will start the browser at the New York Times and another for local radar.

On media files MP3 files can simply be copied over and will play. Video files are more difficult. I have a library of captured .flv files and captured TV shows in .ts format, some of which I would like to put on the Playbook to view when out of WiFi range. However, neither of these file formats is supported directly on the Playbook. In principle there are two options: copy over the file and use an app that does on the fly conversion, or two, preconvert the file to a supported format (like .avi or .mp4). I experimented with both.

Xem thêm: LHS Thứ Sáu 22.11.2019: TIN VIỆC LÀM ĐÚNG – Linh mục Antôn Lê Ngọc Thanh, DCCT

There are several apps that claim to allow you to play .flv files on Playbook. I bought one for $0.99 and while it played .flv files, it was not clean (position slider did not work). I tried a couple of converter programs, which you run on your desktop before downloading. The best (by far) was Freemake Video Converter, not only is it free, but it’s simple to use and will convert a batch of files in one shot. I found it shrank the file size of .ts files, which are initially quite large, by roughly x3 and expanded the size of .flv files, which are initially small, by roughly x2. ————- update My tests show HD (1080p) videos taken by Playbook are quite large, about 6 Gbyte/hour. I found running them through Freemake Video Converter with NO change in resolution, file type, or video quality reduced file size to 2 Gbyte/hour, a factor of 3. Very handy if you want to keep lot of Playbook video stored on the Playbook. ————- Before converting a lot of files I did several tests comparing file formats and resolution. Freemake Video Converter makes it easy to reduce file size by lowering resolution. Tests with a sharp HD video showed no difference that I could see between 1080p and 720p on this small screen, so I decided to go with 720p. This resolution reduces .ts file size by a factor of 4. Reducing quality to TV level, still very watchable, reduces .ts file size by a factor of six.

Quick tests of various formats (avi, mp4, wmv) showed no significant difference in quality or file size and all seemed to play fine on Playbook, so I choose avi and began converting. This turned out to be a mistake. Not one of the first three converted TV shows (1 hr) would play correctly on Playbook. One refused to open and other two gave an error when the slider was moved, though all played correctly on my desktop. The only reason I can come up with is that Playbook has a problem with long files in avi format. My quick tests had been with short files. I then noticed that it says in the Blackberry document, ‘Supported Media Types on Blackberry Tablets’, avi. wmv, and mp4 are “supported”, but the “recommended video format for local playback” is mp4. So I reconverted the same three TV shows to mp4, also lowering the resolution one step to 720p, and now all played fine on Playbook. So my recommendation is stick with mp4, which is the format Playbook uses for its own videos, and reduce resolution to 720p (1280 x 720).

WiFi file transfer A neat trick to easily transfer files to Playbook from your computer over WiFi (no cable!) is to put a shortcut to Playbook on your Windows desktop. Set the ‘target’ of the shortcut to either the IP of your Playbook (found under About, Network) or the ‘Tablet Network Name’, which you can change (found under Storage and Sharing, Network properties) preceded by \ (two backslashes). When you click on the shortcut, Explorer opens and Playbook will appear as a Network device. Click the Media folder and you now have access to all Playbook media folders. For this to work the Playbook ‘WiFi Sharing’ setting (in Storage and Sharing) needs to be ON. Transfer rate is a little slower than with a USB cable (about half), but perfectly usable. (update) For some non-transfer operations, like file rename, I find USB more reliable than WiFi.

Html files, pdf files and File manager The Blackberry (so called) “File Manager” doesn’t show file details, and critically (for some weird reason) it hides local html files, though it does show local pdf files and allows you to open them. Real file managers are available in App World. A pretty good basic file manager (free) is ‘AIR Browser’ and better is ‘File Browser’ (a buck).

‘Air Browser’ and ‘File Browser’ provide a way to work with local html files, they show them and will open them in the browser. Once open in the browser local html files work well, all the internal and external links work. I find it frustrating that Blackberry doesn’t provide direct support for local html files, because I have a whole library of such files that I want to use on the Playbook.

Privacy A useful app for file privacy is ‘File Shield’ (buck). It provides a simple way (without passwords!) to hide videos, photos, and documents. In the app directories and individual files can be toggled between private and public. When set to private, files and directories effectively disappear, visible neither to Blackberry applications nor file managers.

Bugs and weirdnesses I bought just after OS 2 release and my OS upgraded to 2.0 when my new tablet initialized. Here are the bugs and weirdnesses I have found in a week or so of use.

— I initally wrote that my volume up/dn buttons had never worked and assumed it was a software bug because I read someone else reported volume buttons stopped working after an upgrade to OS 2.0. See comments where Ronald kindly set me straight. — Video application has a couple of drawbacks, one is no folders. In the pictures application if you organize picture files in subfolders, the opening screen shows only the subfolders. Not so with the video application. You can put videos in subfolders, but the video application still displays all your videos files on the opening screen. Primitive and inconsistent. Even more surprising the video application displays videos (with the formats it supports) regardless of the folder. Put a video in say, Voice folder, and it still shows up under Videos. — The video application provides two display views: Downloaded Videos and Recorded Videos. Videos uploading to the Camera directory are displayed in the Recorded Video view ordered by the file time stamp, so some separation of videos is possible. Videos in the Downloaded Videos view are ordered alphabetically, No other sort appears to be possible. — Document mode of the browser does not work right in portrait orientation (tested with New York Times articles) — a Hotmail text message in browser would not finger expand — Adobe’s pdf reader come installed on the Playbook, but it is not well integrated with the browser. When a pdf link in the browser is clicked, instead of just opening the file your only option is to download the file. — ‘Power Off’ is a built-in Blackberry app with just three power buttons that are the same as under the battery icon. ‘StandBy’ in the app does not put the tablet to sleep (as it should), it does a ReStart (locking up your machine for two minutes)! You have to wonder just how much testing Blackberry does when a trivial app like this does not work right after a major OS upgrade. — As I discussed above, it appears the video player has a problem with long .avi files, though this format claims to be “supported”. — With Blackberry emphasis on security it is surprising its OS does not directly provide support the hiding of files. — After a week of use the browser crashed (gray screen) requiring Playbook restart to fix it. — On my 2nd day with Playbook it crashed (it first refused to open files, then it hung with Shutting down splash screen displayed). There is a way to hardware reset the Playbook, equivalent to holding down the power button on Windows desktops, but I had to search the web to find it. It’s hold down three of top four buttons (vol up, vol dn and power) for 10-15 sec (or until you see red led). This restored my Playbook to good health with no loss of data. I took off one star (5 => 4) for the volume buttons not working (whoops, see comments) and for a system crash in two days of use.

Top reviews from other countries

LauraUK

4.0 out of 5 stars A good tablet for non-Apps addicts 🙂

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2014

Verified Purchase

I know it might sound crazy to some, but yesterday I bought my second Playbook at an excellent price. Last year we bought a Playbook hoping that Blackberry would release their BBM 10 software. Well, they didn’t but we are still using our Blackberry on a daily basis to surf the web and watch cartoons on Youtube. This is our main use for the Playbook, and although there are games and apps, we haven’t got enough time to spend playing whatever game is in fashion. My daughter, however, has got some nice apps to play and draw that can keep her busy. We also use the Playbook as a PDF reader and now with the second one we will use it to video chat when away from the family for work. At least this is our hope, since sadly we didn’t manage to do this with the Blackberry Z10, which I had to return. All in all, for the price we paid, we are satisfied. It charges quickly with the fast charging docking station and I am sure that we don’t use it to its full potential. We have a terrible computer at home and we haven’t downloaded music or videos onto the Playbook yet. I am sure that if we really needed Apps such as Skype or Whatsapp (or anything else that is in fashion these days) this would not be the tablet to buy, but these Apps can be installed on a smartphone very easily. All in all, a good tablet for web browsing and media playing if the budget is tight.

JontyB

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Performer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2011

Size: 32 GBVerified Purchase

I love the Playbook. It is a handy size with an excellent fast browser supporting Flash video. It is sturdy and very well put together. Unfortunately apps are limited and you need a Blackberry smartphone at hand to enable the bluetooth ‘Bridge’ that links your emails, address book & calendar. We have been promised future compatability with Android apps that should greatly increase the appeal.

The Playbbok is also tethered by bluetooth to access your phone’s 3G network, useful if you are unable to obtain a wifi signal. There is therefore no need for a 3G variant making the Playbook a good value alternative to the i-Pad. The Playbook has HDMEI, USB and Fast Charge connectors but no memory expansion capability or SD card. I would thererfore recommend at least the 32MB version.

I did have a little difficulty getting the software to start-up but the free 90 days UK support line soon sorted the problem and it has been trouble free since. It is comforting to know that that there is help from Blackberry if you need it.

M. Hallett

5.0 out of 5 stars it’s brilliant. There is the problem that it was a …

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

I’ve had the Playbook for around eighteen months now. It’s an absolute bargain compared to other tablets on the market. If you want to use your email, surf the web, take pictures or video, store documents, listen to music, or use a few simple commonplace apps, it’s brilliant. There is the problem that it was a commercial disaster for Blackberry and so they’ve given up on it really, which is a shame. I would suggest you download the origami browser – it is streets ahead of the native Blackberry browser. I don’t give a damn about having 101 applications or playing games. If you don’t care about that sort of thing either then this is a smashing buy.

Xem thêm: Một người bạn thật sự là người bước vào cuộc sống của bạn khi cả thế giới đã bước ra – Thien Vlogs

MW_GB

3.0 out of 5 stars Its no iPad and its not about the Apps

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2012

Size: 32 GBVerified Purchase

Lots of good reviews, but I suggest you ask yourself why you’re thinking of buying this. Better be becasue its cheap, because its not best.

Ok; its far from junk. Its nicely built, has a bright screen (great for showing off pictures & video) & a competent web-browser. I like the size and weight. BlackBerry Bridge is a useful feature if (like me) you’re one of a seemingly dwindling band of BB users.

But there are some signficant problems. Its slow to boot up (90 seonds maybe, unless you leave in stand-by and that drains the battery quickly), its slow to charge (I leave it overnight), bettery life is poor if you are using Bluetooth (maybe only a couple of hours), I find the touchscreen is often unresponsive, and the browser sometines spontanioulsy shuts down (in fairness the OS2 upgrade seems to have improved that). And its just awkward to get things done (try mailing a photo or file to a contact – virtually impossible with OS1, clunky and slow with OS2, unless you connect to a PC, which at least you can do, but is hardly the point surely). BB Bridge freezes & I’ve had to reinstall 3 times (tough to do by the way – if you’re interested, try to delete BB Bridge AND Bluetooth items on BOTH devises & start install from stratch). I watch streamed videos on my iPhone, but they won’t play on the Playbook on the same WiFi.

You get the picture… but the point is that iPad users I know report none of the above proplems…. To be clear, I’m Apple agnostic, but I’m just left wondering if RMI have put anywhere near enough development into the Playbook, or have just lost interest.

So I bought it becaue I’m a BB user and wanted a reasonably cheap tablet to find out if I would get use out if it. I do. And it somewhat pains me to say it, but my next one will be an iPad.

John Dare

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely piece of kit, but far too many issues with apps.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2013

Verified Purchase

Pros – well built and sturdy, decent built in browser. good audio for a small tablet, plenty of built in storage, very acceptable screen resolution, wifi connects easily, OK cameras, fair price.

Cons – very few decent apps and most of those are way too expensive, android apps have to be sideloaded – fiddly and time consuming, RIM constantly promising upgrade to BB10 at some point in the future but it never seems to happen and now never will(see next paragraph).

This could and should have been almost a significant a tablet as the ipad but has been constantly let down by appalling planning and support from RIM. It’s such a pity because there is a lot to like about the Playbook and even 2 years after it’s launch it still performs almost as well as many newer and more expensive tablets. If only the OS could be properly upgraded. Sadly RIM have now decided NOT to upgrade the OS to BB10 and have therefore totally let down very many Playbook owners.

Paraphrasing the the words of my old headmaster – “with a little more effort RIM could do so much better”!

I have just added a fourth star, as I get used to it sideloading becomes easier. NO chance of a 5th star since RIM have reneged on their promises to upgrade to BB10.

Nguồn: https://sharengay.online Danh mục: Đời Sống

Amazon.com : BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB 7″ Multi-Touch Tablet PC with 1 GHz Dual-Core Processor, 5MP Camera and Secondary 3MP Camera, Video, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – Black : Tablet Computers : Computers & Accessories

from Sharengay Trang Tin Tức Độc Đáo VIDEO https://ift.tt/2UyO26D via IFTTT

[ezatluba]

With an Internet of Animals, Scientists Aim to Track and Save Wildlife

Using tiny sensors and equipment aboard the space station, a project called ICARUS seeks to revolutionize animal tracking.

By Jim Robbins

June 9, 2020

The International Space Station, orbiting some 240 miles above the planet, is about to join the effort to monitor the world’s wildlife — and to revolutionize the science of animal tracking.

A large antenna and other equipment aboard the orbiting outpost, installed by spacewalking Russian astronauts in 2018, are being tested and will become fully operational this summer. The system will relay a much wider range of data than previous tracking technologies, logging not just an animal’s location but also its physiology and environment. This will assist scientists, conservationists and others whose work requires close monitoring of wildlife on the move, and provide much more detailed information on the health of the world’s ecosystems.

The new approach, known as ICARUS — short for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space — will also be able to track animals across far larger areas than other technologies. At the same time, ICARUS has shrunk the size of the transmitters that the animals wear and made them far cheaper to boot.

These changes will allow researchers to track flocks of birds as they migrate over long distances, for instance, instead of monitoring only one or two birds at a time, as well as far smaller creatures, including insects. And, as climate change and habitat destruction roil the planet, ICARUS will allow biologists and wildlife managers to quickly respond to changes in where and when species migrate.

“It’s a new era of discovery,” said Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, whose center is working with the project. “We will discover new migration paths, habitat requirements, things about species behavior that we didn’t even think about. That discovery will bring about all sorts of new questions.”

As an added bonus, people all over the world will one day be able to log on with a smartphone app to what’s known as the internet of animals to follow their favorite bird or tortoise or fish as it migrates and is tracked by the space station practically in real time.

The science of wildlife tracking, known as bio-logging, has come a long way in recent years. In the 1990s, researchers were still tracking large mammals using devices the size of lantern batteries. The technology has grown smaller since then, but many collars and tags are still too big for some three-quarters of the world’s wild creatures.

This space-based approach to uncovering the hidden lives of animals is led by Martin Wikelski, the director of migration research at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Germany, who pursued it with a passion for years to overcome gaps and drawbacks in current technologies. It has been funded primarily by DLR, the German space agency.

ICARUS combines off-the-shelf technology, which includes solar and GPS units, and new communication technology that was developed for this mission, and specifically designed for tracking small animals.

On the ground, researchers will attach solar-powered bio-loggers that are far smaller than other technology — the size of two fingernails. They weigh less than three grams, about one-tenth of an ounce, and technicians say they will soon have one gram trackers.

Once secured — an easy process that seldom harms the animal — the sensors will hitch a ride on an array of animals and insects, like locusts, songbirds and baby tortoises. Most current wildlife tracking technologies can’t be attached to creatures that weigh less than 100 grams, or about three and a half ounces. And while the new sensors are smaller and lighter, their advanced design will allow them to collect far more data by monitoring an animal’s physiology, including skin temperature and body position, and external conditions like weather metrics.

The technology can also be used to accomplish a range of goals beyond wildlife studies.

Dr. Wikelski has studied the ability of cows, domestic goats and sheep in Italy to sense earthquakes and volcanic eruptions hours before they happen. Behavioral changes can be picked up by the sensors, he said, so herd behavior may provide an early warning.

“We think something smells wrong to them and there is static in the air,” he said. “So they move into wooded areas where they have shelter.”

Why the animals react is not yet known.

Icarus could also help track elephants vulnerable to poaching in Africa, or keep tabs on species of bats, pangolins and other animals that have played a role in viral epidemics.

“With skin temperature we can see in the ducks in China whether the next avian influenza is starting,” Dr. Wikelski said.

The power of this new approach is partially based on the fact that the space station can pick up the signals of these animals almost anywhere on the planet (the station does not pass over Earth’s polar regions, however). And while other conservation projects have tracked sharks, birds and other migratory species with satellites, this one aims to be useful for a wide range of species that researchers can ask to have added.

The sensors it relies on, at about $500 each, are a fraction of the price of other widely used tags.

They can last an animal’s lifetime and even be reused. They are able to store up to 500 megabytes, an entire lifetime of data on an animal. A researcher need not retrieve the tag; its data can be downloaded with a computer or a smartphone.

ICARUS “will truly change the study of animal migration,” said Nathan Senner, a biologist at the University of South Carolina. He plans to use it for a study tracking the Hudsonian godwit, a shorebird that makes one of the world’s longest migrations, from southern Chile to Alaska.

“We could get location estimates that are much more precise and help us develop targeted on the ground conservation measures,” Dr. Senner said.

In Europe, studies show some 30 percent of migratory songbirds, or about 420 million, have disappeared. ICARUS may give a much more detailed answer to where and why the animals are dying and guide conservation measures.

Dr. Wikelski said he was asked by a farmer in the German village where he grew up why there were no swallows this year.

“It’s hard to say,” Dr. Wikelski said. “Did they die on the way south? Were they eaten in the Mediterranean? Were they hunted in North Africa? Were they poisoned in the Sahel? Was the weather really bad? Those are the kinds of things we will find out.”

ICARUS will provide data on an individual bird, as well as a collective. In a study by Dr. Wikelski and others at Max Planck Institute, researchers are tagging 1,200 blackbirds in the hopes of better understanding the timing and route of their travels and where and why their numbers are declining.

In the Galápagos Islands, sensors will be used on baby tortoises to track their migration, a project of the Galápagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Programme.

“No one knows how the hatchlings survive,” said Dr. Wikelski, who works with the program. “Those are the lost years of the sea turtles. Knowing where they go will allow us to protect them better.”

Because ICARUS has the capability of tagging many more animals than other technologies do, Dr. Wikelski likened it to a smartphone traffic app that can track many cars on a highway at once. One phone can provide a lot of information about one car, but many phones sending information to one app can offer information about traffic patterns.

One of the goals of the project, Dr. Wikelski said, is to help conservation managers respond to a changing world. Protected areas like wildlife parks and forest preserves are defined by fixed boundaries. But many species are on the move as climate and other changes cause shifts, and protecting them will require an understanding of where they are going and where new protected areas and corridors may need to be created.

The system will be open to researchers around the world to use for research. And the data, with some exceptions, will be accessible to everyone. Dr. Wikelski said readings from ICARUS could be combined with other kinds of information, such as the eBird database, to make the data even more robust.

Another ambition of ICARUS is to allow anyone with a smartphone to follow tagged migrating animals. One app, called Animal Tracker, already exists as a way to tap into ground-based wildlife tracking systems.

Dr. Wikelski hopes that connecting people to a single charismatic animal whose movements they can follow will build support for conservation. “If people hear Cecil the lion died it’s very real to them,” he said, referring to a lion in Zimbabwe that was killed by an American hunter in 2015. “But if you say 3,000 lions died nobody cares.”

Mark Hebblewhite, a wildlife biologist at the University of Montana who has used wildlife tracking technology for decades, said ICARUS would have the capacity to fill in many gaps in our knowledge of the natural world.

“We’ll get a lot of things from ICARUS we can’t get any other way,” he said. “It’s exciting.”

But technology has downsides as well, he said. Birds may suddenly and unpredictably change their migration, for example, after years of traveling the same way, and Dr. Hebblewhite said there was a danger that conservation decisions could be made by people “who don’t know anything about birds except dots on a map.”

Some might say nature should maintain a degree of mystery from an all-seeing eye in the sky, but Dr. Wikelski, not surprisingly, doesn’t agree.

“These animals are providing really important information, maybe for survival of humankind,” he said. “We should have this information.”

[carsbrid]

Car radio Multimedia Video Player

2 Din Android 8.1 Car Multimedia Video Player 7" Universal 2DIN Stereo Car radio GPS For Volkswagen Nissan Hyundai Kia toyata

  New Arrival: OS: Android 8.1 GO /6.0 RAM+ROM : 1GB+16GB / 2G+16G / 2GB+32GB Resolution: 1024*600.Capacitive Touch Screen Support: Navitel for Russian customer CPU : Quad Core A7 / 1.3GHz x 4 Sound Processor: TDA7388 Support LOGO settings 2 din Android 8.1 go Multimedia player for Universal most old cars   It is commonly known as a car DVD player, but it cannot play DVD discs. It can connect to an external DVD player via USB.  

      Some models, such as QASHQAI 2010 installation size: 178 x 99MM, can not be installed, size is not compatible, this requires cutting the dashboard frame, if you can not accept, please measure your radio size before ordering, and confirm the installation size with me, Because my product size is: length 178 mm X height 102 mm. This is a universal size, Suitable for most 85% old cars  

  Choose the right cable package for your car

  If you choose the number 8 option, please contact the store seller, we need to know your model, the car year, preferably you can provide the model cable picture. (If you don't contact us, we will send the ISO cable by default on the third day)

  What is in the package: 1PC * Car Android Multimedia player 1PC* Power cable 1PC* RCA cable 2PC* USB cable 1PC* RCA cable (Suitable for rear view camera) 1PC* GPS antenna    

  If you need a suitable matching camera or recorder DVR, please click on the image link below. Input: DC 12V - 14.4V Support CMMB digital TV (optional) Support USB DVR (optional) Support TMPS (optional) Support OBD (optional) Support DAB + (optional)  

  Not all Volkswagen models support OBD original cars, 5% of cars do not support OBD, or support some OBD functions. Mirror connection

  Free map data takes about 1-4GB  

          Features 1.Upgraded Dual system mirror link:IOS/Android mirror link IOS one-way :IOS supports mobile phone one-way projection to the machine Android two-way:Android supports mobile phone two-way connection       2.Built-in GPS receive: Users can purchase directly from play store for offline navigation. With wifi connected, Google Maps can be used perfectly, you can go anywhere you want and never get lost again! 3.Built-in WIFI: Connect to WIFI, and you will find a new world，the most convenient one is the online map. 4.Rear view camera: Need to choose the camera,the car is connected to the reverse gear to automatically switch(requires optional) 5.Steering wheel control: Through it you can control the functions you need by steering wheel, more convenient 6.Built-in Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP/Hands Free/Phone book Support Bluetooth hands-free calls Bluetooth music player Auto loading phonebooks 7.7'' 1024*600 Super High Definition Digital Screen 8.Driving recorder: You can choose a recorder, and the car has playback, the evidence can be retained 9.Double USB adapter input 10.Built-in FM with 30 preset stations 11.Support file manager: Support download, install and delete over thousands of android apps 12.Support multilanguage: Support languages, up to 70 national languages 13.You can enjoy music from you mobilephone without any cables, and also support USB connetion. 14.FM Radio: Online music you can transfer the music to the car stereo by FM to enjoy the original car stereo sound 15.High definition 1080P: Full capacitance touch screen for easy operation, well designed user interface for car only маска ford focus 2 автомагнитола bmw e60 bmw e90 volkswagen passat b6 h7 led dash cam helmet камера заднего вида Specifics CPU:  Quad-core Color: Black Android 6.0 / 8.1 api 23 / 27 Package Dimemsion: 22*14*12cm Package Weight: 1000g RCA port: 2CH rear video input, 2CH rear audio output, 2CH rear RCA input Memory: Build-in 1G DDR3, 16G flash memory Amplifier power output: 4*45W Screen: 7'' Capacitance Touch Screen Language:English/Russia/Polish/Janpanese/Italian/French/German/Portuguese/Turkish/Indonesian/Chinese(traditional)/Chinese(simplified)/Chinese(traditional)/Chinese(simplified)/et     Product included 1 x Car Android Player 1 x GPS Antenna 1 x Power Harness(Optional) 2 x USB Adapter 1 x RCA Input and Output Wire 1 x  2 din frame gift 2 x Installation Bracket   carlaoer android 8.1 car dvd for nissan qashqai x-trail almera note juke universal multimedia car gps navigation player 2 din car radio gps android 2din Car DVD Player GPS wifi For VW Nissan TOYOTA Volkswagen peugeot honda lifan byd Multimedia Android 6.0 Car Radio 7 inch 2din DVD 1024x600 GPS Navigation Bluetooth USB 2 din Universal For Nissan VW Toyota Peugeot Player   FAQ: 1.Why can't turn on the car radio ? 1.1Please check the Voltage of car radio : 12V 1.2When you test this car radio,you can combine the red and yellow wires and connect them to the positive side of the power supply.Black line to negative power supply. 1.3Replace the same type of insurance to test the car radio. Note: Please must use our power cables to connect our car radio,it is not possible to insert the original car plug directly into our machine.   2.Why the car radio will show "No Signal" when we reversing? Please check if the camera's line is properly connected to the car radio. Note:The video port of rear camera must insert the "CAMIN" port of car radio.   3.Why does the camera display "!" and "Can't watch video while driving" when I use USB to watch videos? Please turn off the "Video Warning" function in the settings,then will be OK.   4.Why can't search FM? 4.1: No radio antenna inserted; 4.2: Please check if the radio antenna is plugged in. Please insert more antennas several times to make it well contacted; 4.3: The signal of your location is not good. Please go to a better place to test again 4.4: The radio antenna on the car is broken/no effect; please replace the radio antenna and test again.   5.Why can't connect the Bluetooth of car radio? 5.1.Open the phone settings interface, open the Bluetooth in the Bluetooth function, search for Bluetooth devices, find the player's Bluetooth model to be paired; if you need a pairing code, enter 0000; if not, try 1234 or 123456. 5.2.Please try to use another mobile phone to test this function. All methods are correct and still cannot use Bluetooth, Please unplug the plug on the back of the player and plug it in after 3 minutes.       Please don't give us bad reviews and disputes before contacting us. If there is any problem with the product please contact us first, we will help you solve the problem.thank you!

Read the full article

[airbnbfestivals]

Caveat Emptor: DO NOT book from Nilesh of Albuquerque, NM!

TL;DR: I booked Nilesh's 2nd room to be close to my friend/coworker, and I told him I'd extend my stay as soon as I hear from my boss. Host doesn't tell me until I sent a request that morning that he shoved my belongings into my coworker's room for someone else to rent. Also, if you like your sleep, you're roommates with a wannabe version of The Situation from Jersey Shore who likes loud music and revving his V8.

Full Story:

DISCLAIMER: Before you dox/shitpost me (which has happened when I made a similar cautionary tale over an incident that was MUCH worse), I have 12 good reviews for the times that I've used Airbnb (proof available upon request) and not one bad review, I've kept the house extremely clean and was extremely considerate, so it's not me being a troll/prick, nor did I do anything to deserve this, otherwise I won't waste my time with this post.

I'm in town for work; My friend, his wife and I are from California (initially at least; I moved to Boise, ID)... He was dispatched to New Mexico, and I was sent from Wisconsin to take over his wife's job after she got promoted to an office job back in CA. I booked the 2nd room since we're not only tag-teaming sites, his car broke down on Thursday and I can give him rides while it's waiting for the parts to arrive.

However, since I heard rumors from our supervisor that we might be reassigned to Texas, I only booked and paid for 4 nights until 11:00 AM Monday and specifically told Nilesh, the host in writing, that I would extend the stay as soon as I confirm where I will be, whether it's a few days or even the end of the year, but he verbally said it was no issue.

At the same time, my friend's wife flew back but left a lot of her stuff here, and he had some stuff he no longer needed, but of course his plan was thwarted; not to mention since I wanted to visit some friends and enjoy some CA specialties (In-N-Out, and well... Can you believe there's not a single Hawaiian BBQ restaurant in Madison, WI?), we emptied out my stuff trusting that it'd be there (including testing equipment worth almost $20,000; even the chintzy GPS antenna is $300), loaded up the entirety of my car, and headed to CA.

The coordinator finally sends the schedule from India on Sunday night (Monday morning their time), and I sent the request to extend the Airbnb for another week accordingly. Lo and behold, the next morning I find out that not only has the host decided to accept a competing offer for 2 months, before I can ask, he unabashedly tells me that he moved my stuff to my friend's room as of Sunday evening when my reservation was still valid (not only is it effectively trespassing, it'd make for one hell of a debacle if we came back early), and refuses to cancel the other guy out of fairness... Instead of being able to sleep in a bed I know is there and be able to work together easier, I had to drop my friend off at 5 AM in the northwest side of town (Rainbow and Paseo Del Norte), drive another half hour to the Airbnb I had to instant-book after this (Comanche & Juan Tabo), go to sleep sticky/sweaty since I don't have clean clothes or my soap (I hate body wash), meet up mid-day to swap belongings since we were both too tired to unload this morning, and go pick him up before every shift (our sites are generally in the opposite direction) until his car is fixed.

Sorry for being long-winded, but I'm still a bit salty and need to get this off my chest, and I don't want to leave anything out to avoid ambiguity.

Oh, and like the TL;DR says, one of the permanent roommates is pretty much The Situation IRL: Drives a flashy car that he likes to rev a few times once he parks it (even if he comes back at 3 AM), listens to loud rap music at all hours, and is pretty much an all-around living stereotype of Chad memes.

Original post here =+-+= Get $20 off your first AirBnB stay.

[cdrforea]

Fi GPS Dog Collar Review: 3-Month Battery Life In A Tiny Box

New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/fi-gps-dog-collar-review-3-month-battery-life-in-a-tiny-box.html

Fi GPS Dog Collar Review: 3-Month Battery Life In A Tiny Box

Fi GPS dog collar review: Find Fido

"Set it and forget it. Fi is the GPS dog collar you will almost forget to charge. "

Unbeatable battery life

Accurate tracking

Sleek design

Clean app

Affordable

Localize GPS slowly

Excessively minimalist app

Doesn't work without mobile data

We hadn't seen any tire tracks in the snow on the way to the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. Fat, wet flakes fell off so quickly that we probably wouldn't. There was no sign of anyone or anything else nearby.

Our mix of the Great Pyrenees, Marty, had gone into the forest. In the middle of bleak Central Oregon. In a snow storm.

My girlfriend and I followed him in snowshoes. When his curly white tail disappeared over a comb, she called his name with a hint of panic in her voice, and I grimly considered his chances. He curled up next to the fire last night. Tonight he would be alone and shiver in the forest.

Fortunately, Marty returned. After a few hours, but probably only a few minutes, Marty walked back in our direction. The strapping of the line on his collar felt like catching a fiddled wine glass. Still, his solo adventure made it clear to me that Marty, a dog that eats its own eyes, is too stupid to be left alone in the forest.

As it turns out, there is a gadget for this.

A new kind of collar

If you are looking for a GPS collar you will find two variants. There are strong hunting collars from Garmin and slim trackers from Whistle. The former takes about 24 hours and the latter about a week. I already have to charge a whole bunch of devices, from bike lights to video doorbells. That's why I chose Fi, a game changer that promises a battery life of up to three months on a single charge.

Just a little bigger than a box of matches, the Fi practically disappears into Marty's curtain from the folds in the neck. He didn't seem to know it was there. But he also slept on a bunch of Ikea screws, so he's a bad test item.

The premium battery life means that this collar is always ready.

I set it up in the Fi app within a few minutes, where the base station was mainly connected to my phone and home Wi-Fi network. The base station not only charges the collar. This is one of the clever methods that Fi uses to find your dog's location without a GPS battery. If the collar with Bluetooth Low Energy can communicate with the base station, it knows your dog is at home. When you go for a walk, it knows your dog is close as long as the collar can be connected to your phone. Only when your dog is really lost – both from the owner and from home – does the collar have to start its GPS.

The Fi not only serves as an emergency signal for your doggie, but also tracks steps like a Fitbit. I'm not interested in following my own steps, and even less so in Marty's, but it's good to see the number after a long walk.

The Fi app looks great like a Scandinavian escape room, even though it's flawless. You have to randomly tap and swipe things to discover each function, as the usual visual cues have been swept under the carpet in the name of order. For example, the main screen shows a map your dog is currently on and his step count for the day. Would you like to see a map of yesterday's walk? It is not clear how you would do that. However, I quickly learned it and the elegant presentation of the app focuses on the most important information – where your dog is located.

hide and seek

I stopped intentionally releasing Marty, but I activated the Lost Dog feature while my girlfriend accompanied him without the app installed, which Fi sees as an outlier. You can also set up safe zones to trigger this automatically when your dog leaves the house. After I activated it when she left the house, I waited. And waited. The Fi app told me that it was still looking for a GPS lock. When Marty found it, he was only a few blocks away.

These are excruciating minutes when your dog may shoot under the wheels of the UPS truck. Why can't Fi find your dog as quickly as your phone's GPS? The collar has a smaller antenna than a phone, a smaller battery and cannot use Wi-Fi for support. Although future software updates may shorten the delay, the delay after an escape is unlikely to change soon.

Hikers and campers should also note. The Fi needs both an LTE and a GPS signal, so it won't work from the network. This is an understandable limit of technology, but even on a hike when my phone showed two bars of LTE signal, the Fi app couldn't connect to Marty's collar. If you're using AT&T cell towers, you'll also have to pay $ 99 a year for a Fi subscription.

However, the battery life is fantastic. I forgot that I had to charge it at all. You can benefit from a fee for at least two months, and three seem doable depending on your dog's activity. We got used to taking it off when we washed Marty, but we didn't have to. It is waterproof. His cheeks only dry faster without a collar.

Then of course Marty escaped. I forgot to close the garage door, and when Marty, worried about the bathroom, found his way out and disappeared. I found him rummaging around my neighbor's pear tree and peeling rotten fruit. Without a collar, I had to pick him up like a forklift to take him home. Another neighbor walking her dog made me laugh understandingly as I strolled across the street with a 90 pound annoyed dog.

Our opinion

There's a lesson here. They say the best camera is the one you have on you, and the same goes for GPS dog collars. Even though Marty escaped through the narrow window, I took off his Fi, it's up to me. The first-class battery life means that this collar is always on and always ready.

Is there a better alternative?

Nothing else lasts so long. The new Whistle Go Explore comes closest with a 20-day battery life and costs a little less at $ 130. The popular Findster Duo + needs to be charged every week, but it works off the grid and has no subscription fees. Depending on your priorities, it may be a better alternative.

How long it will take?

Martys Tracker has suffered the superficial scratches you'd expect from a dog's neck life, but it shows no signs of dying. As with all devices with a lithium-ion battery, you can expect the lifespan to decrease when in use.

Should you buy it

Yes. The Fi offers security without the hassle of weekly charging.

Editor's recommendations

[davids69811]

Open-Air Vehicle transport service 43009 - DIY Transport

How Much Cash Can I Earn as a Single Person Cars And Truck Delivering Broker? If you have an interest in understanding what a cars and truck transport broker does and also just how much he/she earns as a bachelor entity, then this guide is just for you. We will certainly talk about an automobile delivery broker's role and afterwards review the money you can expect to make in this organization. To make sure that being said, let's begin: What Does a Broker Do? Before we dive deeper into the ordinary revenue of an automobile shipping broker, let's discuss the obligations of a broker. Since without knowing what you need to you, you can not discover if it's worth the money. So right here are the fundamental duties of a car transportation broker:  Open-Air Vehicle transport service 43009 Obtaining Leads: The initial as well as crucial component of a broker's obligation is to get leads. He/she needs to find individuals curious about shipping their vehicles. This can be extremely tough if you are simply starting due to the fact that where do you locate such individuals? There are numerous ways, however what a lot of the leading brokers do is produce a site. They then start placing informative content on their web site that helps bring in potential customers to their site by means of internet search engine like Google. If a possible purchaser (lead) is getting free information from a broker's internet site, they will undoubtedly trust them sufficient to ship an auto with them. Converting Leads: This is where the broker is come close to by the prospective consumers as well as begins negotiation. Nobody takes the initial price tossed at them for the actual cars and truck transportation quote. So individuals request a discount, and also the broker does his finest to facilitate them. He/she likewise addresses their queries and also educates them about the total lorry delivery procedure until they are pleased as well as make the booking. Coordinating with Providers: As soon as the order is scheduled, the broker collaborates with providers found on dispatch facilities like Central Dispatch, work out prices with them as well as provide the details of the client, consisting of addresses of choice up/ drop off places, auto information and other needs. The carrier after that takes off to get the cars and transport them to the customers' location. Consumer Assistance: Throughout the vehicle transportation procedure, the clients may have inquiries or particular information they wish to show the service provider. They speak to the broker regarding that and also he/she assists them out. Plus, if the car gets harmed, the broker aids them with the insurance policy asserts also. There are many more points that an automobile transportation broker offers like a complimentary auto clean, totally free automobile leasing, ensured pick-up days and so on. Nonetheless, only big, recognized brokers do that; as a single person, you don't have to worry about them currently. So ... How Much Can I Make as a Single Person Car Shipping Broker? Since you know just how much work the broker takes into the process, you can anticipate him to charge anywhere 25-35% of the total tons managed by the carrier. Here, the 'tons' indicates the overall variety of autos transported by the provider with your affiliation. Some auto transportation brokers bill a relocating charge instead of compensation, ranging from $100 to $500 depending on the transport gas mileage, shipping area, and additional shipping solutions that customers might need like expedited delivery or encased transport. Fortunately is that considering that you will certainly be a single person based car transportation broker, you will have really marginal expenditures, so your earnings will certainly be higher.

Exactly How Supply and Need Influence the Rate of Shipping a Vehicle? If you are asking yourself why the cars and truck shipping expense is not the very same throughout the year, after that the Law of Need is the major offender right here. It specifies that; whenever the demand for something increases as well as the supply reduces, the cost increases. Maintaining that in mind, we will take a look at the interruptions that you can experience in the auto transport prices and also the delivery process when this occurs. So let's get going: Prices can Enhance or Decrease: The initial thing that will take place when the vehicle transportation need boosts is that the carriers' supply will reduce. This means that due to the absence of providers, the prices will certainly increase. You could also have to pay a couple of hundred bucks extra if this takes place. This does take place throughout the year, particularly when the weather is bad as several providers stay clear of hitting the trail during tornados, and that can cause an absence of supply. Just very knowledgeable carriers will want to push the pedal, which implies they will certainly charge added. Similarly, if the period is slow-moving and the auto transport business do not obtain sufficient orders to satisfy their quarterly targets, they will reduce the costs to raise the demand. This indicates you can really obtain a respectable offer. Shipments Can be Slower: This is an additional issue that takes place when there is an absence of supply. If most of the providers are busy finishing their orders, you can obtain stuck in a company's backlog of orders. If this happens when you need transport, you can kiss goodbye to fast delivery times. Once the carriers liberate the existing orders, which can take a day or more, just then they will certainly reach your area to grab your vehicle and then the transportation procedure will certainly commence. However, when the period is sluggish, a lot more vehicle shipping service providers will certainly be offered as well as you can anticipate your cars and truck to be gotten much faster and delivered means in advance of schedule. You Might Not Find a Great Firm: Whenever individuals require to relocate an automobile, they always most likely to the most effective and also most professional auto shipping companies initially. So in case of lack of supply, the industry's huge gamers will certainly be overbooked as well as oversold first. This indicates if you actually have to move your automobile whatever, after that either you will certainly have to drive it on your own. Or, you will certainly have to choose not-so-popular vehicle shipping companies. If this occurs, make sure to completely veterinarian the companies prior to employing them. This consists of checking their BBB account, their traditional establishment, asking for insurance coverage as well as additionally their MC (motor carrier) number. If these points take a look at, just after that deal with them. Bear In Mind Adhering To Tips To Obtain the very best Out of Supply and Demand Effect: - If you wish to stay clear of high demand periods, substantial delivery times and high expenses, do not deliver in winters months or summer seasons. This is since snowbirds move to warmer areas in winters so they take their vehicles with them, which can trigger a lack of service provider supply. - If you want the very best costs, as well as much faster shipment times, ship in the autumn season as the vehicle shipping sector is really slow-moving at this time, so you will certainly get lots. Final Words: Bear in mind, whenever there is an increase sought after, the supply will fail. And also if this takes place. You will need to change your budget plan to pay for the greater expense. This just how every industry functions.

The Ins as well as Outs of Moving an Auto When it involves getting an auto transport service, there are a couple of things to know than simply hiring a specialist vehicle delivery company. You require to understand the ins and outs of the whole process to make sure that you do not get capitalized on. We have actually prepared this overview with 5 points to keep in mind when starting the car shipping process, as you can protect on your own and also your vehicle by following them. To make sure that being said, let's start: Vet the Automobile Delivering Company: Prior to you even obtain quotes from car delivery firms, the first point to do is make a listing of the prospective vehicle delivery company you are mosting likely to request quotes and also vet them. This will aid you shortlist just one of the most specialist and also reliable ones, which will certainly ensure a better bargain and also exceptional solution. When you have created a list, browse the names of those firms on Google, individually, as well as check out the evaluations on Their Google Organization accounts, BBB accounts, and BirdEye. Note down the business that have fantastic reviews and then ask them for quotes. Request for Discount: Once you have obtained the automobile shipping quotes, ask the business to provide you a discount. Many business have unique discounts like AAA members, military personnel, senior citizens, trainees, impaired persons, as well as more. See if you fit inside any of these classifications. Attempt to negotiate the cost to fit your budget plan, but if you see the company is unwilling to go any type of additionally, don't push since they may either let go of their earnings to provide you a discount or cut edges in the solution. Once you have actually obtained a sufficient quote for a firm, you can proceed with them. Prepare The Car: This is where you require to do a little research. Take your cars and truck to an auto mechanic as well as request a checkup for any type of issues, loosened wires, loosened components, or leaking liquids. After that take the vehicle for a wash, which will help in automobile examination (much more on this later). After that get rid of anything useful from the car that can be removed like a looter, antennae, GPS, radio, and so on. Place them inside the trunk and secure it. Next, disable the alarm as it can go off throughout transit and cause the driver to lose focus while driving. Last but not least, only leave the quarter gas storage tank filled up, which will certainly be enough for the individual on the obtaining end to take the vehicle to a filling station as well as have it loaded. Decreasing the gas will certainly decrease the cars and truck's weight, which can conserve you some bucks on automobile shipping cost. Do Not Place Over 100lb of Personal Items: When it comes to placing your individual stuff inside the automobile, do not go over 100lbs because the auto or the things can get taken. And also, do not place anything beneficial inside because the cargo you place in the vehicle will not be shielded under insurance coverage. So if anything gets harmed, or lost, you will certainly not obtain compensated for it. Prepare Inspection Record: Lastly, when the service provider arrives to get the cars and truck, inspect it extensively from top to bottom. You have already washed the cars and truck at this point, so any kind of existing damages will show up to you. Write all damages in the assessment record and also have it signed by the provider. If the vehicle gets any added damages after it is provided, you can utilize the assessment report to file insurance claim and also get paid.

Contact US :

DIY Transport

860 Boardman-Canfield Rd, Youngstown, OH 44512, United States

Call Us: +13302867686

Email: Sales@EasyAutoShip.net

[mybreadlover]

What is GPS spoofing?

What is GPS spoofing?

Global positioning system (GPS) technology is now the standard way for travelers to efficiently get from point A to point B. While GPS delivers unparalleled opportunities to businesses and individuals, there are some drawbacks to using this technology. GPS devices can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks through GPS spoofing.

GPS Spoofing 101

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have been around for years in many industrialized countries, and GPS is just one of those systems.   GPS spoofing happens when someone uses a radio transmitter to send a counterfeit GPS signal to a receiver antenna to counter a legitimate GPS satellite signal. Most navigation systems are designed to use the strongest GPS signal, and the fake signal overrides the weaker but legitimate satellite signal.

Commercial Hazards of GPS Spoofing

GPS spoofing isn’t to be confused with GPS jamming. GPS jamming happens when a cybercriminal blocks GPS signals altogether. Selling or using GPS jamming equipment that can block communications is illegal in the United States. While GPS jamming appears to be the greater threat, GPS spoofing delivers a sucker punch to a variety of businesses.

GPS spoofing allows hackers to interfere with navigation systems without operators realizing it. The fake GPS feeds cause drivers, ship captains, and other operators to go off course without any coercion. Businesses that are particularly vulnerable to GPS spoofing are shipping companies, taxi services, and construction companies.

Shipping Companies

Shipping companies that haul freight via land, air, and sea all use GPS-based navigation systems to get cargo safely to destinations all over the world. GPS spoofing leaves these shipments vulnerable to hijacking and theft. A practical example of this is where hijackers use GPS spoofing to misdirect a vehicle to a location where its cargo can be robbed—and hid the truck’s location while it’s happening. Additionally, many shippers use GPS-enabled locks to secure their cargo, allowing them to open only when the truck arrives at its set destination. GPS spoofing undoes those locks as well. In all, this puts drivers in danger, and trucking companies lose millions of dollars of cargo each year due to hijacking incidents such as these.

Taxi and Ride-Sharing Services

Gone are the days when taxi drivers relied solely on their knowledge of a city’s streets to transport passengers. Today’s taxi drivers can go into any city that their license allows and do their jobs efficiently with the use of GPS technology. This flexibility comes with some drawbacks, however. GPS spoofing allows drivers to fake their location and commit criminal acts while still on the clock. Drivers from ride services can also use the technique to fraudulently place themselves in surge areas to get more money for their services. Projecting a false location is a financial risk to companies and is potentially dangerous for passengers.

Construction Companies

While skilled construction workers are certainly valued, specialized tools, equipment, and machinery are the assets that many construction companies seek to track. These expensive assets commonly go missing on worksites, which eats into company profits. In recent years, GPS asset tracking systems have been installed to make sure construction equipment, tools, and machinery remain at authorized worksites. By using GPS spoofing, a thief could move an asset to a new location without anyone knowing about it until it was too late.

Dangers of GPS Spoofing for Everyone Else

GPS spoofing isn’t just a threat to businesses and government agencies; it also can be the catalyst for significant harm to individuals who rely on GPS. Cruising waterways along the coasts is a favorite hobby for those who enjoy boating. Modern boats are equipped with GPS-based navigation systems. A cybercriminal can use GPS spoofing to get a skipper to steer his boat off course and into the path of danger from modern-day pirates.

The makers of location-based dating apps tout them as a safe way to meet a potential mate. These apps use GPS technology to help users identify dates by their location. When a bad actor uses GPS spoofing, he can fake his location or guide his date to a dangerous location.

The future of driving is now. Some electric cars are already equipped with an autopilot feature that offers unparalleled convenience to travel-weary drivers. However, independent research findings have uncovered a critical vulnerability in the cars’ navigation systems.  What will happen when fully autonomous, self-driving cars are made without steering devices that would allow a person to take control of their car during a GPS spoofing incident?

Tips to Combat GPS Spoofing Attacks

If you own a business that relies on GPS-based navigation systems, you’ll want to know the best ways to sabotage GPS spoofing attacks. The Department of Homeland Security points out some physical and procedural techniques to fight the problem. It recommends that companies hide GPS antennas from public view. GPS spoofing works well when an attacker can get close to an antenna and override legitimate GPS signals that come from orbiting satellites.

The agency suggests installing a decoy antenna that’s in plain view of would-be cybercriminals. Adding redundant antennas in different locations at your site allows you to notice if one antenna is being targeted for GPS spoofing. Companies such as Regulus Cyber are also developing GPS spoofing detection software that alerts users of spoofing incidents and keeps their devices from acting on spoofed GPS data.

Additionally, organizations should consider taking GPS-enabled equipment offline whenever connectivity isn’t actively required—thus making them less susceptible to attack. Likewise, following the basics of security hygiene provide further protection, such as regular updates and changing of passwords, along with the use of two-factor authentication, network firewalls, and other cyber defenses.

GPS Spoofing for Privacy

While GPS spoofing can cause big problems for people, businesses, and governments, there is a legitimate use for the practice. GPS tracking and location sharing present everyone with real privacy issues. GPS spoofing allows users to hide their actual location from those who could cause harm. Security companies can use GPS spoofing to guard high-profile clients or expensive merchandise. Individuals can install GPS spoofing apps for free on their Android phones to mask their locations and protect their privacy.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/3hTGBNX