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Library, Tuesday

There had to be something. Rinoa had spent the last several days poring over books and files and more books and more files until she felt like her eyes wanted to yank themselves out of her head.

The books didn't help, and the files didn't look to be any closer to actually being done. When she got burned out on one, she changed to the other. When she got completely and absolutely burned out on both, she practiced her showcase piece on the piano, in short bursts, or she slept. The piano was more helpful; it calmed her down.

And so today she was in the library, feeling like she wanted to puke instead of look through one more book that wasn't going to tell them anything, or decipher one more file about imprisonment and cruelty.

But she couldn't stop. Her phone had stopped ringing, and the Acting President of Galbadia no longer picked up. No one back home did. And whatever-it-was was getting closer.

She had been a horrid excuse for a daughter but she was going to fix it. She had to. She just needed more coffee. And more books. And ... something.

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She is running on fumes. As are all of you, probably.

Squall loomed over her worriedly. "You look like you're not feeling very well," he insisted. "Have you been taking enough breaks?"

Rinoa ran one hand, messily, through her hair.

"Have you looked out a window lately?" she asked.

That was not a non sequitor.

And Squall didn't take it as one.

"You were already overstressed from the files your father gave you," he insisted. "There are other people here who are better at researching, and you're going to need to be well-rested when the fighting starts."

...Wait, there was another point that was more important, wasn't there? "Also, I'm worried about you."

"I can't sleep," Rinoa said. "My father stopped calling. I mean, the lines are dead. But he stopped calling. I can't just ... sit here and ... I try to sleep but I can't. I think of every terrible thing I ever said to him and I need to come back here."

Squall wrapped his arms around her. "I'm not asking you to give up," he insisted. "Just take a break. A short one. Let's go out to dinner."

"No," Rinoa said, shaking her head firmly. "No. I wouldn't be able to enjoy it."

She did put the book down, and rub her eyes heavily with both hands.

"If you want to help," she said, "then ... bring food. Or ... or drag me back to your room so we can get take out and maybe you can even help me get some sleep. But I can't just -- go out and -- try to -- deal with things right now. I can't."

Squall nodded, and pulled her chair away from the desk. "Then come on," he told her. "Back to my room."

"Coffee?" Belle offered, bags under her usually wide eyes. "Normally I'm a tea sort of person, but...sleep's not happening anyway, so."

"Thank you," Rinoa said, taking the cup gratefully. "I keep nodding off while I'm reading, but whenever I decide to actually try to get some sleep, I can't. All I can think of is ..."

She didn't need to finish the sentence. They all had the same pain right now, even if different faces and names were attached.

Belle nodded quietly. "Everyone seems to have lost someone," she said softly. "A little distraction is more than understandable."

She was obsessing about where her father had gone, after all. And it had been a week since she'd heard from Adam, and that wasn't really like him.

She was trying not to think about it.

"I'd feel better if it seemed like we were getting anywhere," Rinoa said, shivering. "Are we? Did -- did anything find something yet and I just missed it?"

It was entirely possible she had. She had been underslept before this mess had started, from the ridiculous amount of paperwork she had swiped from her father; she wasn't sure how she was still functioning now.

"No," she said, shaking her head and running a hand over her hair. "No one has. I personally haven't. I -- " She hazarded a glance towards Special Collections, and added, "I'm not sure whether we will. But we have to keep trying. There's an answer somewhere."

Rinoa was starting to be very afraid that there wasn't an answer, anywhere. Maybe this was how the world ended. Maybe another Sorceress out there was destroying the multiverse, just because she could. Maybe the world was just ending for no good reason and and and --

Deep breaths. Panicking wouldn't help.

"I have magic," she said. "A lot of it. We have fighters, and witches, and brilliant researchers, and ... and we just need something to attack. Something to fight against."

There has to be something in a library this big. Right, guys?

... guys?

Use this thread for digging out books and investigating.

Kitty had never been to the school before, let alone the library, but it seemed like a good place to start when there was a big black cloud... thing hanging around all ominously. She was looking through the stacks trying to find something that might jump out at her. Or she'd have to just ask someone else what people had already covered and see if that gave her a jumping off point.

Rinoa was going to actually try to be a helpful librarian's aide for once.

"Can I help you?" she asked, trying to sound professional and not like she had coffee for blood at this point.

"Why not," Kitty said, trying for a friendly smile even though smiles were a little difficult today. "Do you know what people are mostly looking for? Subjectwise?"

Rinoa returned the smile, though hers wasn't any better. "I've been working on portals and interdimensional travel," she said. "I think a few people were poking at magic-related weather conditions, in case this is some kind of superstorm. Do you think maybe there's some kind of dimensional compression going on? Everything's merging together?"

"It wouldn't be the weirdest thing to ever happen, but it doesn't sound exactly right," Kitty said thoughtfully. "It can't be getting everywhere, but I wish there was some way to better track where it is hitting and what the links are and how everything works together."

Not that she'd been poking at her computer to see if she could do that or anything. Turns out, nope. Not with what she had here.

"There have been lists," Rinoa said, helpfully. "Of at least the missing that we know about, I mean. I think Professor Skywalker started one of them. He might have the updated version, if you need to use that to trace the connections."

"I've seen the board," she said. "But there seem to be at least a dozen different versions of Earth alone. And I don't have the technology right now to track it when I don't know anything about them or the people, and there's no way for me to even know where to start." Sigh.

"I don't know any of the versions of Earth," Rinoa said. "Sorry. I'm from ... somewhere else entirely. Is this something you do a lot? Track connections across dimensions?"

"No, but it's something I could probably figure out with the right resources and some time," Kitty admitted, and added, "I'm good with computers."

Rinoa tapped her fingers lightly on a shelf. "I'm almost wondering if we should get into groups," she said. "If you're good with computers, then you should be on technical stuff, because my eyes will just glaze over if I try to read that and I'll miss whatever is important. Maybe you guys can come up with some kind of a mechanical ... something that can ... stop whatever's going on?"

It made sense in her head. It may not out loud. Rinoa was running on caffeine and fumes.

After staring out the window for a stupid amount of time that morning, Seifer headed to the library.

He wasn't a nerd type, but he could research pretty well, and he headed for the books in the back that were dusty and hadn't been read in a while.

Hopefully Seifer wouldn't mind an ex-girlfriend plopping down next to him. Because she was also leaning over to, if he didn't object, drop her head onto his shoulder.

"Don't disappear," she said. "That's an order."

Seifer just grinned and turned a page in the book he was reading.

"And we all know how well I follow orders."

That earned him a very light smack on the ribs. Not that Rinoa was sitting up, however.

"I mean it," she said. "I can't ... I can't get anyone back home now. And if you go off and do something stupid and don't come back then I'll completely lose it. And I'll never forgive you."

Natalie? Definitely at the library again.

And growing more and more frustrating with every hour that basically turned up nothing useful or new. But, she was here. With books and coffee.

Jack was there. There was a huge pile of books one side of him and SARAH on the other spitting out other refrences that might be helpful.

Of course the trick here is that Jack would have to know that they are helpful.

Ender had been here every single day out of the past two weeks, barring yesterday.

He was back here today, complete with a shrinking stack of Reed Richards' books.

"You look like you know what you're doing," Kitty said, mainly because this guy was closest to her and had books. Shh, it was a totally scientific process. "My first day in here. Is there anything that's been definitely ruled out?"

"Anything from the realm of Kaeleer," Ender supplied, looking up. "Reed Richards. Several areas of magic across the multiverse - I have a list somewhere, if you need it."

Well, a print of whatever had gone up on Peter's blog, plus what he knew people had been working on. But same thing.

"If I can make a copy, that'd help," she said appreciatively. "Turns out it sucks not knowing anyone or anything specific when something like this hits." And she didn't like feeling clueless.

"Who would've thought," Ender agreed, and reached down to rummage through his bag for the list.

He produced it a few moments later, putting it down on the desk. "I think we've got a full complement working the magic angle right now," he said.

"That's not really my speed anyway," she said, taking the list to look it over. "What about a technological angle?"

Ender held up the book by Reed Richards he'd been reading. "My advice: don't go with anything involving theoretical mathematics unless it's really your field," he said, "But I think there's a few avenues unexplored there."

Squall pulled a random book off a shelf, skimmed it, found nothing, and put it back. He looked over the books, trying to judge from their titles if they'd be any help, and couldn't tell. So he picked up another random book to skim.

Research was NOT his strong suit. Hopefully, they'd find something sooner or later and be able to shift into actually DOING something.

After exhausting his own resources in terms of old notes, the internet, and what books he had on... anything he could think of, usually related to wormholes (because, hey, start with what you know), Marshall made his way to the library to start his own digging.

... If he was still mostly focusing on wormholes, well, it was what had caused all of the problems at his last school. Destroying universes was definitely something the wormhole would do, too.

Lindsey had avoided the library yesterday.

Today he was back, sanctimonious British kid be damned.

He wasn't sure the books on the table in front of him were promising, but maybe the less obvious choices were going to have some useful information. Maybe.

Scully was asleep. On a book.

Yeah, that was inevitable.

On one of her trips past, Rinoa spotted Scully asleep. And so she made a quick detour, and returned with a blanket, to tuck around her.

Scully snuggled in deeper to the blanket, and yawned in her sleep.

Eventually, she woke up enough to look around, bewildered. "Unh?"

In theory Jen had a hotel room. In practice she really hadn't seen much of it at all, save for the few minutes she took every thirty hours or so to go back and shower, because not even under these circumstances would she completely ignore the concept of personal hygiene. (Yet another side effect of living in a drafty clocktower for a year.)

Also in practice, she'd reached that rings-under-her-eyes, twitchy state that came from not enough sleep and too much caffeine.

But look, she had some frighteningly complex spreadsheets and flowcharts of ideas, hypotheses, and test scenarios for some of those hypotheses.

. . . most likely none of them were right, but hey . . .

This thread is for other uses of the library -- checking books out or using the computers or what-have-you -- that you feel like modding.

This thread tells you I will be slow, and apologizes for my insane lurkiness lately, by explaining that my head somehow thinks it is Open Season and has been trying to kill me for the past couple of weeks. Dear brain: fuck you.

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Library, Tuesday

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