fandomhigh | Library, Friday

For anyone who wants non-BDE tags.

For those doing the research thing.

Yeul was back in the library today, her clothing torn and bloody, but herself uninjured (only due to potions healing her injuries, however). She had a stack of books on the desk by the seat she was using as hers, but today she wasn't really reading them.

Instead, she was thinking, as she wandered the stacks, or twice in the morning left the library entirely to head to class.

Every now and then she'd flip through the piled books idly, before wandering away again.

Jeff was still doing the research thing, but his heart wasn't in it. Nothing seemed to be of any use. He'd scoured through the book Cosette had found, but there didn't even seem to be anything more useful in that, either.

He'd resorted to walking through the aisles and picking books at random, in the off chance that something was misfiled, or that a useful clue would be hidden in an unlikely place.

Sholeh arrived carrying a giant platter of meat. (http://fandomhigh.livejournal.com/3587635.html?thread=205703731#t205703731) Because the researchers were going to eat well if she had anything to say about it.

Even if the meat they'd be eating well was dinosaur.

Dinosaur was arguably a vast improvement over what had passed for food at the Sergeant of Waterloo, and it wasn't as if Cosette had even gotten much of that unless she stole it from guests' empty plates or had one of the other girls sneak it to her. Just imagine how much even that had gone downhill after they lost the inn.

Actually, don't. You probably didn't want to.

She sidled over and gave Sholeh a brief smile of gratitude. "Ah, now there's some good grub!" Add slang to the list of things she'd be mortified about later. "And we haven't even got to go out and risk our skins for it."

Billy perked up at the sight of real food and smiled at Sholeh. "That smells good. Have you been cooking?" he asked.

Jeff dove for the meat. Because... well, meat.

"Omnomnomnomnom," he said, as he took a piece and bit into it. Yes, he actually said that.

Elizabeth came in late. She had made the mistake of going back to the hotel last night; returning to the library had been a grueling affair, and now at least part of her dress was torn.

She didn't let the odd aftershock of fear keep her from the books. But when Special Collections opened, she felt no temptation to go in.

Still locked when Billy came in in the morning, but...

It was in the midst of the afternoon that Special Collections' doors suddenly and unexpectedly flew open. It had been rearranging itself to weather the current storm, and now it was finished.

It was eerily quiet inside. Instead of strange vistas or troubling dangers, there was just a library; lines and lines of bookcases stretching back for a long time. Occasionally, they would shimmer and change - one bookcase turned old and weathered, another became leathery like skin. And yet another turned pink, and yet a fourth turned steel, and yet a fifth turned a color no human eye could see and blended into the background. Sometimes, something skittered across the floors, making an inhuman noise... but on a Special Collections scale, it was very, very calm.

Edited 2014-03-28 11:10 (UTC)

New books to check! Freakish scary magical ones, but books nonetheless!

"So, what exactly is in Special Collections?" Jeff asked. "Should I be worried? 'Cause I'm goin' in there."

"If you're going, I am too," Sholeh said, looking unaccountably stubborn. "It can be dangerous in there."

Not that Sholeh thought she would be particularly good in danger, but if people were going into Special Collections, at least one library representative should accompany them.

"Special Collections is where we store all the books that are too dangerous to be shelved where just anyone can access them. And I think there are other things, too, but I don't know. We're not supposed to go in there without a teacher's okay."

She squared her shoulders. "But it's been locked for the past week and that wasn't Mr. Constantine's doing, so if it's open now, well, it's either a trap or potentially useful."

Or both. With Special Collections, it could always be both.

Dangerous, but potentially useful. Jeff considered the implications, and came up with what was perhaps the strangest question he'd ever asked. "Well... how sentient is the library?" He grimaced and shook his head. "I hate that that's a real, actual question!"

"I'm pretty sure the whole island is sentient," Sholeh sympathized. "With a stupid sense of humor to boot."

Because even when people weren't mucking about and breaking things, weird stuff happened. All the time.

"Well, the books definitely have a mind of their own," she continued. "And can move around and stuff according to their whims. I don't know if I'd say the whole library is sentient, but if any of it is..." She nodded towards the door that gaped invitingly. "It's Special Collections. It's...tricksy."

"Tricksy, huh?" Jeff asked. "Well, all right, then."

He stepped up to the door and called "Hey there!" He didn't expect a response, but the echoes were... interesting. "You, the library! Or the books! Or the collective spirit of knowledge, or whatever entity it was that opened the doors! I -- that is, we -- are assuming that you don't want this library torn apart by rifts in the fabric of reality any more than we do. So... we're coming in to help. No funny business, please?"

"I am a teacher," Hannibal pointed out. "The last time, that was where we found the answers." He nodded at Special Collections. "I suspect we may need to do so again."

Also, he was very curious to see what types of books might be in there.

"Are we supposed to declare our intention to enter?" Yeul wondered, vaguely amused by the whole idea. "I was just going to go in."

And if something tried to eat her… well… she got eaten? No big?

"Trust me, a door opening like that? That's just an invitation to trouble. There was a chance that someone would pipe up with a 'No! Don't go in there!', and I wanted to... y'know, see if they did."

"Would that stop you?" Yeul asked, looking past him, into Special Collections. "If it was dangerous?"

"Well, no," Jeff admitted. "But forewarned is forearmed, and all that. It's good to know."

"Suppose we'll find out, then," said Cosette, peering through the open doorway. "Even if it's a trap, it can't mean nothing that the place sprung open all by itself now."

"Well, exactly," Jeff replied. "It's creepy and convenient. Either it's the start of a new chapter in the horror movie that is our lives, or else it's the library wanting to help us. I just want an idea which."

"Something will come along and eat us one way or the other eventually, if it doesn't mean to help us," Cosette said with a shrug that was equal parts courage and recklessness. "What's left to lose at this point? Besides, I want to know too."

Jeff nodded. "All right, then. So it's settled."

Cosette seemed a little too eager about all this, now. "Who'd think that a great big old room full of dusty books could be such an adventure?"

Well, the non-AU version of her would, but.

It would take some time to find the history section - it was closer towards the back of this iteration of Special Collections, past two sets of Alexandrian bookcases and across one very small strip of water.

But the most important parts were always the most dangerous, weren't they?

After the long trek, Jeff started combing through books and, once again, finding nothing. He gave up in frustration and took a step back, dejectedly watching the bright spots and shadows of the uneven lighting playing across the shelf.

He suddenly became convinced that one of the brighter spots was meaningful, and grabbed the book it was centered on. It turned out that the illuminated manuscript was... an illuminated manuscript. From... well, he had no idea when. Sometime old. Medieval? Renaissance? Whenever they made books like that. But what he found when he flipped the pages... It was their new library friend, standing with villian-man, as they both looked at the "weather machine".

He whistled sharply to alert the others. "Jackpot! Check it!"

After taking a holo of the page, he left the book there. For the other researchers to look at, maybe, or just because he felt weird about taking the book out of Special Collections. Either way. He had something more important to do.

Jeff trekked back to the main library, made a beeline for Elizabeth, and pulled the image up on his omnitool. "Is this you?" he demanded. "Where were you before ancient Rome?"

Elizabeth veered up, startled, especially by the sudden verbal assault. "I was home!" she said. "In my tower, I was there, and then..."

And then what? She tried to recall how she went from one or the other, but it didn't connect somehow. Then her mind was struck by a horrid ache and her nose began to bleed again. "And then what?"

"The nosebleeds," Jeff mused, as he grabbed her some tissues. "They're part of it, somehow. Keep those handy, 'cause you might start gushing, now."

He pointed at the picture. "This man, and this machine. Especially the machine. What happened?"

"I don't know," Elizabeth said, staring at the picture. She repeated it, more desperately, "I don't know!"

She pressed the tissues against her nose and squeezed her eyes shut as a flash of something hit her mind. A face. Concern. "Are you afraid of God, Booker?"

That was her voice. But she hadn't opened her mouth.

Edited 2014-03-28 17:36 (UTC)

"'Kay, so you haven't been around long, so just to get you up to speed, creepy voices coming from nowhere like that are things that people have said in the past. You do know this Booker guy, you just..." Jeff grunted in frustration and looked around for Dr. Lecter. He wasn't upset with her, not really, but he had a feeling they were so, so close to getting this whole mess solved. "This really isn't my area of expertise. Maybe it would help if you... this machine, here, in the picture? It's on the island. In the woods. Do you think you could fix it?"

"I don't know, I'm not a mechanic," Elizabeth said frankly. She peered down at the picture again. "But something about it feels... almost familiar..."

"No," Booker's voice echoed past, "But I'm afraid of you."

Alerted by Joker's frustration, Hannibal stepped closer, looking from Elizabeth to Joker's holo. He pulled up a chair and sat close to Elizabeth. "What do you remember? Start from there."

"I, I don't know," Elizabeth stammered, staring down at her hands. She frowned, running her thumb over her pinky finger. "I lived in a tower with my books, just... going through the humdrum of everyday life."

For a captive, anyway. "Next thing I knew, I woke up in front of the barracks..."

She ran her finger over her pinky again. Something didn't feel right. "No. I, I think I remember a man. That man. He burst into my library unannounced." She paused. Frowned. "... I think he recognized me." She looked up at Hannibal's face. "Joker's right," she said. "I should find this thing, if that's what started it."

Hannibal looked to Joker. "You've been to where it is now, yes? You could take her there?" To Elizabeth, he said, "Is that what started it? Do you remember seeing this machine at all? Try to picture it where it belongs, where you last saw it."

She looked down at the image again. "It's fuzzy," she said. Blood slid down her nose again, but she ignored it. "And very old. I think I was... a child. They released me from my tower, just for a few hours." She looked back up. "There were so many machines. I could be mistaken. I don't know. I'd need to see it."

"Then we'll have to arrange that." Hannibal handed her a handkerchief and helped her hold it to her nose. "Lean forward and breathe through your mouth."

Edited 2014-03-29 05:57 (UTC)

Yeul was terrible at group activities, so when they entered Special Collections, it wasn’t long before she drifted away from this others, though she never went too far. The skittering, inhuman noises didn’t startle her, nor did she look for what was causing them as she aimlessly wandered down on row of books and then another.

The music section held her interest for a while—though it held nothing of import for what they were hear for—and so did the section on flowering plants.

When she moved on from them, she did so reluctantly. The small strip of water soaked her shoes as she passed through it. Her footprints left marks on the floor as she explored the history section quietly.

A thin, single sheet of paper sticking from a shelf caught her eye. It was placed higher than she could comfortably reach, but it was a curiosity in a library of curiosities, so Yeul carefully went up on tiptoe and reached for it. Managing to tug it free with two fingers, she brought it down to look at what turned out to be an old-West style wanted poster.

The pictures and names on it held her attention. The names—Elizabeth and Booker—were both familiar, as was Elizabeth’s face. The date seemed wrong, to her, though she was probably the worst at guessing such a thing, but it placed them in the late 18th century, which was quite a while from the current date. She thought it was American in origin.

"I think I found something," she said, raising her voice slightly. It wasn’t very loud, compared to most people, but it echoed, which carried the sound further. "Though I don’t quite understand it."

She took a picture of it on her phone, just in case, and still carrying the poster, went looking for someone who might have a better grasp on time and what was reasonable.

Who might have a strongly worded opinion on Special Collections being, you know, special.

Oh, John had words alright, none of which were fit ~~to type out in a public comm~~ for young and impressionable ears.

Not that he let that stop him. Anyone passing by his office would hear a torrent of British profanity which seemed to never end.

Woooo Friday!

Library, Friday

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Special Collections

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