fandomhigh | Library, Wednesday

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Library, Wednesday

Sholeh was doing her best to maintain a calm facade for the patrons of the library. No one was going to benefit from a panicky library aide. No, she needed to be composed, collected, and helpful. The library was where people came to figure out solutions, not see a ninny hiding under her desk with her pinafore over her head.

So Sholeh set to work, straightening the research tables and tidying the books. The ones that had been deemed useless were put away, the ones that had seemed useful were set to the side, and another armload were brought down for people to look through for clues. She taped a few sheets of paper to the circulation desk for people to make notes that everyone could read. It was all well and good for someone to have the answer written down somewhere, but it wouldn't do anyone else any good if it wasn't disseminated properly.

The flying creature that was roosting on the bookcase squawked at her several times, but a few dark glares from Evan had it quieting down. He'd been sticking to her closer than her own shadow for the past several days and with all the sharp-toothed creatures lumbering about, Sholeh couldn't quite say she minded.

And--rats! Now her nose was bleeding again. There really was no rest for the weary.

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Since Jess had been kind enough (so to speak) to dismiss them so quickly from class, such as it had been, Cosette -- still preoccupied with the strangeness of that tidal wave this morning -- went directly to the library afterward.

Wherever it had disappeared to, was that connected to the same place their hostile new "friends" had come from? Éponine had said the dinosaurs and Vikings had only seemed to appear after the man with the gun ran through and while Cosette didn't exactly trust her to volunteer information without keeping her own interests at heart most of the time, this was not one of those situations, and she did trust the older girl's observational skills if nothing else.

Dinosaurs, Vikings . . . those were things out of history, Cosette reasoned, though admittedly she'd only learned that fact this week, in the past several days of seemingly futile research. She ventured into the History section of the library today, this time with a more specific purpose in mind.

One book led to another, one section into the next until she found herself in History of Fandom Crises Past. And sure enough, there were the dinosaurs in one book, and the zombie piranhas, and --

She kept going, flipping through book after book until she ended up on page 265 of a volume entitled (inexplicably) "Plaaaaaaaaaaaaaague!" She snapped a quick photo of one of the illustrations and sent it off to Éponine with a message: this your cove?

The second she got a confirmation she came bolting out of the stacks with the book held over her head, shouting, "Look, look, look here, it's your weather machine!"

The loud commotion made Sholeh start, but once she was over her fright, she was peering at Cosette with interest.

"Our weather machine?" she asked. "It's in that book? Surely not, that's been there forever!"

Sorry, Sholeh. If she'd been raised in a more civilized manner Cosette might not have been yelling quite like that, and she'd probably apologize for it when she was back to being her usual self.

"Perhaps not," she said, and put the book down on the table. Sure enough, there was a schematic drawing of the weather machine along with the somewhat sketchy illustration of the mysterious man's face, but beneath it was a caption that Cosette pointed to.

"There's a plague that's hit the island before," she said, "that's what this book's all about, but it says here that the first time it happened this man pinched this --" and here she stumbled a bit over the words -- "'magical artifact,' the machine, I suppose, and disappeared with it rather than send his child away."

No apologies would be needed, Cosette. Sholeh was just a little on edge from everything today. It was great to hear someone crying out with good news!

"So the plague and the machine are somehow related?" Sholeh asked, bending over the book as well. "That does look like the machine that was left, yes."

"The man's here," Cosette blurted out, indicating the drawing of him now, "on the island, and now so are all these things that want to eat us. That could be a coincidence, but me, I'm not so sure."

"Okay, so you think he's drawing them here?" Sholeh asked, peering at the picture to try to commit that face to memory. It was doubtful that Evan would let her go looking for anyone, but maybe if she spotted him on the way to the hotel...Well, okay, she wasn't sure what she'd do. Politely ask him to leave and take all the monsters with him? "On purpose or by accident?"

"That, I don't know," Cosette admitted. "But if he's been able to disappear with a machine before, well, it must be something he knows how to do."

She paused and added, half in an undertone, "Useful sounding skill, if you ask me."

When she met Cosette again after all of this died down, Sholeh would likely be very confused. As it was now, she simply shared a smile. "I've wanted to disappear a time or two myself," she admitted.

Oh honey. That was so not what Cosette meant.

"So we have a man, a machine, and monsters. Now we have to see where they fit."

"That we do." Cosette seemed fairly animated; she enjoyed puzzles, and this was most certainly one, if a potentially dangerous one. "Though I'll happily leave messing about with the machines to someone else."

"What does it say about the plague?" Hannibal ~~who was totally here all day~~ asked. "Is that something else that we ought to be watching for?"

"How does one watch for the plague, anyhow?" Cosette wondered; she couldn't help a tiny laugh at the idea of trying to play lookout for an epidemic.

. . . it was probably funnier to her, coming from an era before a good understanding of epidemics and the causes of disease and all.

"I suppose," she said, remembering herself and trying to revert to a more serious manner. "Though I haven't found anything else in this book that's got anything to do with that man, or with the weather machine."

Taking Cosette's dress into account, Hannibal answered her question seriously. "If it mentions what the plague's symptoms are, we can see if anybody here shares them, and see what we can do to minimize the spread of it. I don't imagine being sick on top of all the rest would be much fun."

"I wouldn't like that much," agreed Cosette. "Do you think something could bring it here the way the bears and the Vikings and all of those things seem to have been brought here?"

"Anything is possible," Hannibal answered. "Here more than most places."

"All the better if we find a way to shut the door on them all, then, hmm?" Cosette said thoughtfully.

"Preferably before anything too deadly makes its way through," Hannibal agreed. "And you may have given us a place to start. Well done."

Cosette blinked for a moment, caught off guard, then smiled very hesitantly like a girl unaccustomed to praise of any kind. "It's up to the rest of you to finish," she said, "since I'm not sure what to do from here."

"I'm not certain anyone is," Hannibal answered dryly. "But we have more information now than we did this morning."

Jeff jerked his head off the table and stared at the book. "DUDE!!!"

He blinked a few more times, a grin slowly spreading across his face. "Duuuuuuuuude!!! Cosette, you beautiful, beautiful girl! I could kiss you! You are magical and special and wonderful and... and pie!"

Cosette, under normal, non-AU circumstances, would have been blushing half to death. As it was, she only laughed and said playfully, "That's a bit forward of you, but perhaps later."

So much mortification later. So much. But she was nothing if not practical either way, so first things first.

"You got a closer look at it, didn't you? This is the same machine, isn't it?"

[OOC: Aaaaaaaack sorry I didn't realize I'd missed this!]

Jeff gestured at the image of the machine spinning in the air above him. "Well, technically, it could be a remarkable coincidence. Or an alternate-universe version of the machine that doesn't do the same thing. But... my money's on hell yes."

He got up and closed the distance between them, so she could get a better view of his holo while he peered at the book. "So... Huh. This guy stole the weather machine from ancient Fandom?"

Edited 2014-03-26 20:02 (UTC)

"Seems like," said Cosette with a deliberately casual shrug; there were a lot of unfamiliar words in the book and she couldn't be sure she understood everything perfectly. "I don't know why, though. It seems an odd reaction to a sick child, unless he hoped to sell it for medicine."

Her skeptical tone suggested she doubted that.

"Well, the machine's causing all our mess," Jeff mused. "If he knew how to actually control it... he could swap her out for a version who never got sick."

And that was a machine her "caretakers" never ought to get a hold of. Good thing they most likely wouldn't.

Cosette chewed on her lower lip for a few moments, considering, then huffed. "And leave us with a fine old mess to deal with! I'm not so sure he knows how to control it, if all this is any indication."

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Library, Wednesday

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