Flight School: Hunter

Adventures of Flight Crew #7

Warning: there is nO fOurtH WaLL you have been warned. Any resemblance to the real world is purely coincidental and should not be taken seriously. This is all cRacK. I hope you enjoy :')

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The device was nothing like Io had ever seen. A rectangular, shiny surface that appeared black from afar but would light up with colour at the touch of a finger, prompting the most vibrant pictures, numbers and words that seemed to him like a tablet of sorcery at which he had full control of at his very fingertips. Ah yes, that would have to be what it was: a tablet of sorcery.

"It's a smartphone, you moron," identified Vaughn at once, several feet away but perfectly unable to keep his eyes off the device in Io's hands. "This technology allows the owner to communicate with another owner regardless of the distance between the two. Fuelled by 'internet connection,' one can have access to a whole new universe of knowledge and information."

While the last couple of words accurately summed up Io's lifelong search, interest, and hobby all at a go, his experience with eight-balls and the spoon-feeding phenomena of answers made him rather inclined to the former function of communication.

"So... I can talk to Luka when he's in the shower and Pipa when she can't get out of bed?" Io made his first attempt at connecting the dots which the vulture had so kindly provided. He unfortunately did not get very far.

Luka Sullivan was naturally within earshot, seated nearby on a couch shared between Jiro, Papercrane and Victoria, who'd already been charged with vandalising the cushions in the predator's common room twice. Somewhere in the back of Luka's mind, he could tell that this wasn't his first encounter with a phone that was smart. The black, reflective surface that had the power to conjure images so real but the entire concept, so distant in his memory.

He turned to Lyra, all snuggled up in the pocket of his blazer and reached down to pet the top of her head. Io had looked up in confusion. "But I don't lock the door when I shower."

"Information I did not need to hear," concluded Vaughn the bitter, casting an immediate glare his way before holding out his hands to receive his very own personal device, bestowed upon him by the cupcake above. "Can't believe she'd go against the laws of the very universe she created."

His creator was kind enough to enlighten him by pointing out the fact that he was very much surrounded by potential gay couples in every page of all three books in the series he was in, which was practically the breaking of several universal laws all at once. Vaughn had paused; true enough, the thought had never crossed his incredibly androgynous, asexual mind. He glanced down at the universe-transcending device, realizing that it wasn't turned on, unlike the one given to Iolani Tori.

"And no instruction manual, I presume." The vulture was having a hard time deciding between burying his head in his hands and pinching the bridge of his nose whilst palming his face (if that was a term). This dilemma would never have occurred if he'd just been given four arms instead of two but that was the whole point.

The struggles of Iolani Tori would never have occurred or been easily solved with the presence of an all-forgiving, wish-granting god; or the inclusion of internet; or that he'd never come from a tiny village but from some metropolitan city and hadn't stayed up home cooped up in his thoughts like the hermit he was; or texting his mother whenever he wanted to; resolving ambiguous time spent apart from his beloved friends, etc etc.