fandomhigh | Library, Thursday (July 14)

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Library, Thursday (July 14)

Cosette actually made it in to the library on time, which was a bit of a surprise given how lost she'd gotten early in the morning in the hedge maze she just couldn't help wanting to explore.

And then she'd slipped on the streets -- which appeared to be made of soap now -- and gone bouncing down them like a rubber ball, high arcing bounces complete with silly sound effects. She appreciated not actually being hurt by the incident . . . that is, once she had reassembled herself after shattering into hundreds of tiny pieces on impact and getting swept up by a self-operating dustpan and broom.

But she was here now! This had all been quite entertaining yesterday, but now it was getting to be quite a --

A piano came plummeting out of thin air as she pushed open the library doors, squashing her flat, and it was a few seconds before a very flat Cosette slid out of the edge of the impact crater, fluttered to the floor, then popped back into three-dimensional form again.

-- a hassle, she finally managed to think, swatting cartoon birds away from her still slightly dizzy head. It was getting to be a dreadfully inconvenient hassle.

[OOC: The post has now been threaded and is good to go!]

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If you don't need the help of the library assistant.

Edited 2016-07-14 05:16 (UTC)

Said library assistant, who was sorry not to be a pony yesterday but has since drastically revised that opinion.

Who likely isn't too thrilled with this week's turn of events.

For those of you planning to hit the books to deal with this.

Maybe literally hit the books, even, with a cartoon mallet, although that may not be as helpful.

Or it might be. Who knows?

Now I kind of want to go and mainline a bunch of old Looney Tunes shorts.

Obi-Wan had fallen off a cliff today. This was strange in several respects, beginning at 'he wasn't usually so clumsy' and ending at 'he did not, in fact, wind up injured despite failing to use his Force powers and hitting the ground'.

After several more incidents, he'd decided to go to the library, just to see if there was, perhaps, something he needed to know.

"So," he said, sitting down with a few books, "I do believe the island's gone a bit strange."

"Only a bit," Cosette agreed dryly, emerging from the stacks with an armful of books and a harried expression. "You'll want to look out for falling anvils, should you happen to go into the technology section."

"Right." Bob walked through the library doors (literally), put his hands on his hips, and looked around. "Who's organizing everything this time?" He looked around to find out who might be hitting those books. Literally or otherwise.

Obi-Wan heaved a profound and deep sigh. "Of course," he said. "And I suppose the culinary section also holds rather obvious dangers."

"I believe we are all collectively organizing our efforts, more or less," Obi-Wan said. "Those of us who still have thumbs, at least."

"Which rather counts me out any day," Bob said wryly. "Look, I know who we're up against. Or at least, I'm fairly sure I do. He's from Pinkie's world; some sort of chaos creator."

"Pinkie? The pony," Obi-Wan said. He tilted his head. "That is... ....fairly obvious, now that you mention it."

Who had he been to make assumptions about Fandom strangeness, really?

"Who is it, then? What do you know?"

"Oh, of course. And some of the joke books might hit you with a fish, should you get too close. The library always does have its own dangers, but this week more so than usual," Cosette agreed with a sigh of her own, though it wasn't nearly as impressively profound or deep.

Tali did not want to talk about all the ridiculous little pratfalls that had happened to her just on the way here from class, and she most certainly was never telling Joker about them, ever.

She headed straight into the stacks first, and emerged a little while later . . . not from the same direction she'd taken going into the stacks, but several rows down, through a brick wall.

That had not been there before.

That was most definitely there now, and had a hole the shape of a flailing quarian punched through it.

"That's not how physics works, you bosh'tet!"

She wasn't sure why she bothered arguing with Fandom, really, so she just sighed, took her pile of books, and pulled up her omnitool once she got settled in at a table.

"His name is Discord," Bob answered. "He's some sort of chaos entity. Enjoys doing things like...well, as you can see." She and her friends defeated him with rainbow lasers made from friendship and...some other things."

He tried to remember what those things were. "The Elements of Harmony, she called them."

Sam had come to the library pretty early, so he wasn't aware of anything happening with Zoe and Grace, just the smell of books and the frustration of not really knowing where to start looking for answers to whatever was currently going on. Thankfully, Bob mentioning Pinkie Pie gave him a bit of direction, and he turned to one of the computers instead.

"Hey," he said, glancing around after some searching, "Pinkie's from Equestria, right?"

Hanna wandered in, still human, and looking disturbed. She'd run into some of the giraffe-bunnies and the comedy teal deer earlier, and that was just... wrong. Because she was used to weirdness in the Preserve, but that was pushing it.

"Yes," Hanna said, from where she was looking up Things Effecting Deer. "She took us on a trip there for one of her classes (http://fandomhigh.livejournal.com/3895234.html)," she said. "Why?"

"Well, I was looking through old news reports from Fandom, to see if this sort of thing's happened before, and I found this," Sam said, tilting the screen so Hanna could see it. "It was in the school paper in 1902: 'The Fandom High Library threw a going away party for its longtime aide, Miss Vivian Wattana. Many had assumed that Miss Wattana would continue on as the new librarian of Fandom High, but instead she plans to travel to a distant world, Equestria, where she will be taking part in a cultural exchange program. Starswirl the Bearded, an Equestrian magical luminary, has agreed to take her on as an apprentice in the magical arts. Miss Wattana is enthused about the opportunity to study both the magic of Equestria and the culture, promising to send copies of her notes back to the Fandom library where they can be archived as primary anthropological resources. In her speech last night to the staff and friends who attended her going away party, she credited wrangling books in Fandom's library for igniting her interest in interdimensional magic and cultures.

We here at Fandom High wish Miss Wattana the very best with her endeavors and look forward to hearing more about them when she returns. Now, in the Dorms, Enkidu was caught...'"

Sam got quiet as he skimmed the rest of the article, and shook his head. "There's nothing else about this lady in there, but I'm wondering if she really did send stuff back to Fandom."

"it's a place to start." Hanna frowned and said, "Archives? Would that be deeper in the library? Should we ask Mr. Constantine for help?"

"That might be a good idea. I just hope they're not in Special Collections," Sam said, making a face at the thought of going in there.

"I've... heard things, about that part of the Library." Hanna gave the bookshelves around them a nervous glance, then lowered her voice. "Is it true that some students disappeared in there and never came out?"

"No, I doubt that's happened," Sam said, since he didn't want to scare her. "It's definitely creepy and I wouldn't recommend going in there unless it's absolutely necessary but... we don't leave folks behind, you know?"

"Elements of Harmony," Obi-Wan echoed, frowning. "And rainbow lasers of friendship."

That sounded... distinctly odd, but so did many things. "It is at least a place to start. Thank you, Bob."

'Miss Vivian Wattana'. They had been in the library all day, and that was their primary clue so far: a woman who had engaged with these people before, and who had made some promises as to sharing her findings in the future. Or, well, the past, Obi-Wan supposed. If she had done so, those notes would still have to be here, though a cursory glance at the 'W' section had brought him nothing at all.

Fine, then. It was time to put their fate into the hands of the Force.

Obi-Wan stepped out into the center of the library, took a deep breath, and let his consciousness wander. It brushed across a wisp of the Force, and guided him back inside himself. He did as it asked, putting himself into the hands of the current, and walked: past stacks of books, past shelves, and finally, to a small corner in the back, misfiled under 'Light Entertainment, Q' for reasons he could not understand but did not care for.

The volumes were slim, blue, and decorated with little pink flowers. He pulled out the first, completely unsurprised to find Miss Wattana's name on the cover, and flicked through it, trusting the Force to alert him when he found something useful.

The first thing Mr. Starswirl and I noticed upon starting my apprenticeship is that, although our spoken languages have lined up in much the same way many interdimensional languages did back in Fandom, written Equestrian bears no resemblance to written English. It honestly mostly looks like a bunch of squiggles to me. Mr. Starswirl has assigned his griffon assistant to assist me in putting together a translation of the Equestrian alphabet, so I can start working with the Canterlot library's texts as soon as possible.

Not far from this entry laid an intricate alphabet, each sign explained. That did it for the first volume.

He tucked it into a pocket on his robe, then picked up the next. Similar writing, later dates. He read further.

Mr. Starswirl is working on a very important text for the pony princesses now, on their recent discovery of the Tree of Harmony and the Elements they harvested from it. He says they may well be the most powerful magical artifacts in all of Equestria and the lands beyond, and that the details of their discovery and use must be recorded for pony posterity.

He has also asked that I stop referring to him as "Mr. Starswirl". I asked if he'd prefer "Mr. the Bearded", but he didn't seem amused. Equestria doesn't seem to use honorific prefixes like "Mr." or "Mrs.", but apparently it's starting to catch on in court, and the other high ranking unicorns are laughing at him for it.

"The elements of harmony," he murmured. "I wonder if she found more-- ah."

This last entry came with a picture.

The writing underneath was terse, frustrated, but still neat.

Equestrian textbooks don't include titles on their covers. Mr. Starswirl's book on the Tree of Harmony is called "Elements of Harmony", but the cover just has a golden, gem studded unicorn head on it. It's a bit like the old Victorian book binding style from back on Earth, where the covers were just as likely to have the initials of the person whose library it was as any actual information about the book. Sure, it makes them look really pretty on the shelf, but how am I supposed to know how to find the damn things when they look like this?

Obi-Wan shut this second volume and tucked it into his robe as well. He nodded quietly to himself, then stalked back towards the others. "Hello," he said, raising his voice somewhat, "I believe I've found Miss Wattana's work, and it's rather interesting for our purposes."

That made sense, and Hanna calmed down a bit. "This week has made me jumpy. But yes, I know." She sighed. "I'll be here tomorrow too. If I'm still me and can hold a book, I mean."

"Mm." Bob nodded. "I'll see what else I can find. Or remember. I think they turned him into stone? Didn't make much sense at the time, but then...Pinkie."

What else was there to say?

Tali looked up from the books she was flipping through. "Usually when people say something is interesting, there's a good chance it means things just got complicated."

"There wouldn't be anyone on the premises with that sort of power, would there...?" Obi-Wan ventured.

Turning the creature into stone seemed like a fairly easy fix for all of it, if that were the case. "Ah, well."

"I suppose," Obi-Wan said mildly. He held out the first journal. "There should be a work called the 'Elements of Harmony' by a mr. Starswirl. Somewhere. The one problem is that apparently it's written in a foreign alphabet."

". . . of course."

Tali leaned forward to peer at the journal. "But the book's here, in the library somewhere? That shouldn't be too much of a problem, as long as we can get our hands on it. I'll have to make some adjustments to my translation software, but I should be able to get it to figure this out."

She huffed a faint, muffled laugh. "Even if I have to scare it into finishing the job."

"I'm not certain about the book's presence, but it is the best we have." That much was true, at least. "The second journal contains a thorough description of what it is supposed to look like."

It was getting offered to Tali, as well. "In either case, I hope your translation software will be appropriately terrified for the job."

"Oh, I'm a lot scarier than I look," Tali said mildly as she took the journal, not really sounding like she expected that statement to convince anyone. "All right, I'm going to go see if I can track this book down, and then get to work."

She shot a look in the direction of the stacks that could only be interpreted as a glare.

"Let's hope I don't get a banana cream pie in the face and meet my doom in the process."

"May the Force be with you," Obi-Wan said, inclining his head. "I will also keep an eye out for it, of course."

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Library, Thursday (July 14)

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